Linux Sucks

And another geek drops his
two cents into the bit bucket: “Linux, while it has its own bugs,
is 10 times better then Windows has ever been. Windows is
insecure, leads its users intentionally down the path to
stupidity, and makes things easier then they should be. It is this
'usability before security' ideal that makes Windows and the
monopolistically intertwined programs that come with it the worst
software available from every perspective I can think of. Yes,
Linux takes a lot to learn. But, you know what? it takes no more
than Windows did.” He goes on to say: “The more the experts tell
people that Linux is hard to use, the more people will avoid it
and not give it a try. OS X is the perfect example that UNIX can
be easy to use and a fun experience.” Still, 90% of the world has
difficulty with what geeks consider simple. If it ain't point and
click, it ain't going to stick. I agree that Linux takes “a lot”
to learn, but I disagree that it is any more usable than the
alternatives. And who is telling anybody to avoid anything? At
least, around here – where we offer newsletters for Windows users,
Mac users, and Linux users. So, put that in your | and smoke it.

I dual-boot with Windows XP Pro and Mandrake Linux 8.2. While I can use Linux for the internet, office tasks and games, I still haven't worked out how to install any additional programs or upgrade existing ones, despite having used Windows and DOS since the beginning of 1995.
Of course I'll get there eventually, but it still is difficult, and I think the majority of people would agree with me.
That said, Linux is a superior operating system, especially in terms of stability and security. It's just that's too darn difficult to use without the manuals…

Umm…. upgrading and installing under Linux? There are two ways under Mandrake and both are easy. If you want I could explain it or you could wait for the tip I am planning on writing, though it will be subscriber only access. Essentially, get .i586.rpm files and use GnoRPM or KPackage for installation is the easiest.
Oh, and Chris? I don't have a |, sorry. Perhaps you could loan me one at Gnomedex?

XP Pro and RedHat Linux 7.3 dual-boot here- RPM's make installing packages a snap! Just as easy as Windows- the only thing that may trip up newbies is failed dependencies, which can usually be solved without much problem. But the end user should never have to worry about that crap- Linux developers LISTEN UP! Of course shared libraries is what makes Linux so much lighter in weight than Windows apps- hell, my OGLE DVD GUI player in Linux fits on a floppy with two dozen other files! Try fitting WinDVD on a floppy!
I use both because I want to- not because I have to. I could get by fine on either one without the other.

If OS X is the perfect example of easy UNIX, why not just use OS X? I have been for 4 months, and I can't find anything I can't do that I could on my PC. And, not a single crash, kernal panic, etc. Eh, you've all heard it before. Then why don't you listen? Tell 'em, Chris…

I have to agree with Jesse. Although I am a bit biased in the Mac direction, what exactly would be the downside to OS-X? It's the point-and-click ease and pretty GUI that a lot of novice folks want and it's the rock-solid UNIX foundation that many geeks want. Sounds to me like OS-X would be better suited as the 80-something percent OS and let Windows linger in the 8-10 percent range.
Reminds me of the interview Roger Ebert did on TechTV (which I couldn't agree with more.) He made the assertion that most people in the world make bad decisions. They see bad movies. They drive ugly SUV's. They watch horrid prime-time television. And they buy PC's with Microsoft Windows. Why? Because they want to be “normal.” They want to do what they think everyone else is doing.
Why try *nix? Why try MacOS? Why listen to that great eclectic radio station on the outskirts of town (read: alternative, well-designed OS's) when you can subject yourself to horribly bad, mind-numbing programming on the pop station that's always readily available? Wouldn't want to expand your mind anything…

It does occur to me that maybe the decision to use a particular OS is not really a moral decision. If your OS meets your needs, great. If someone else's OS meets theirs, also great. If theirs does not meet your needs, what freaking difference does that make? ^_^

Linux has come a long way since I first took a look. I tried two different distros out a few weeks ago and being a non-technical person it still has some ways to go before average users can actually use it. Technical people claiming that Linux is ready for the desktop for the average user are like artististic types claiming that spatterings on canvas or “installations” consisting of blinking lights or urine soaked icons are great artistic expressions, who are then confused by why most people don’t agree or understand where they’re coming from!

I think most Linux distros should retain their steep learning curves. Not every distro should be easy. But if Linux users truly want everyone to see Linux as a viable alternative to MS the so-called easiest distros (like Mandriva and Linspire) need to be Point-and-Click just like Windows. No failed dependencies, no mounting and compiling, no doing things from the command line, no difficulties downloading third party applications. Point and Click or it will never be seen as anything more than a server/hobby OS to 90% of the population.

And people might take your retarded article more seriously if you weren’t a common bandwagon hopper, and use the same retarded reasons everyone else gives. Oh, and can’t differentiate between than and then. It isn’t hard.

Linux users say comments like; “your using windows for a firewall, are you feeling ok?” ; Linux doesn’t crash as much as windows; etc… I will post some viable arguments linux users have stated:

1: Windows crashes.
My Answer: Are you using an updated version of Windows, or are you still in the dark ages? Window does NOT crash if it is used correctly.
2: Linux is better.
My Answer: Just think of the consequences if Windows wasn’t around? Linux could only be implemented as early as age 10; being generous. Windows is now being implemented as early as preschool years. A 7 year old child can install Windows. A Professor with a PHD in Physics can NOT install a Linux Operating System!
3: Linux can do complex task with a short breath.
My Answer: The amount of time it takes you to learn how to write the command sequence to invoke the complex task in Linux is not worth the time! Sorry- it just isn’t worth my time!
4: Linux is secure.
My Answer: You can write a thesis on this topic. Windows is also very secure. The difference is the way Linux comes packaged out of the box; minimal services! Windows comes out of the box packaged with a whole slue of services.

MY LINUX EXPERIENCE:

Maybe I have been spoiled all these years using Windows. So I gave linux a try; unbiased (really). I tried linux distributions which include Red Hat, Debian, Linspire, and Xandros. I tried their workstation and servers with the exception of Linspire. Linux has come along way; it took this long to figure out what Microsoft figured out back in Windows 95. See folks, I have discovered Linux is a solid operating system, but just not ready for a normal first time users. The Linux community has to make it easy for the end-user. Linspire and Xandros (not because they have the feel of Windows) are easy to install and use; kudos for them. The server editions (Debian and Red Hat) have “basic” common modules missing on install. On install it asks “can do without and configure later” questions. Common Server tasks, DHCP, DNS, even file server all use “config” files you have to manually edit! And yes, Linux does crash; in two instances after install and into the GUI (KDE) it froze. It should NOT freeze on first use regardless of user (experience) input or hardware requirements- point blank!!! To install certain features you need to have all dependences met. Example: to install a simple program AA, you need to already have a.1, a.2, b.6, f.5, and t.9 installed on your system before you can install AA; very sad! It gets worse; in order to install AA, you have to have a.1, but see a.1 also has a list of dependencies, for example to install a.1 you have to have already installed t.p.6, r.t.56, l.4.5, and so on! If you do not install accordingly your system will be plagued with bugs. Once you install AA, three hours later- the 40 year-old developer living in his mother’s garage states it is not guaranteed to work properly. And you don’t want me to get started on how to remove the program; that’s another two week learning curve! The ONLY slight advantage I see with Linux over Windows is viruses, spy ware, etc… I will gladly blindfold, dangling on a rope, with only one leg, and my arms tied behind my back- choose Windows – if this is the only advantage Linux has. PLEASE, the trade-off is well worth it- ten thousand folds! I would not wish Linux on my worst enemy.

MY THEORY:

The Linux Community purposely makes it hard to learn their operating system. This way it creates job security for the Linux workforce. In a SOHO environment you can have the janitor run simple Windows server task; in Linux you need to hire (usually a higher pay structure) full time employee to run simple Red Hat Server Tasks. Some might say it’s worth having Linux as the core OS environment; My answer, Windows servers are being used in NASA, CIA, FBI, UNICEF, Should I go on… Linux is slowly being phased out of production as the core OS servers in fortune 500 companies. It used to be that Linux was dominant in server applications and Windows were being used as terminal applications. Bottom line: The Linux community is causing their own demise by making it hard to learn their system.

The barrier to entry with Linux vs. Windows:

Linux is creating a greater wall to climb for first time users thus they have to attract current window users to make the switch; a very hard sell! To top this off Linux now has to adapt to Windows technology because of its dominant popularity. For example, in order attract new users Linux now has to offer windows capabilities in their operating system in order to run windows applications. While Linux is busy trying to keep up with Windows capabilities in their system, Microsoft is busy in Research and Development. It’s a bad time for Linux! It would take a miracle genius in the Linux community to develop what Xandros and Linspire have taken the first steps in doing. If windows was twice the price it would still be worth it; if you value spending quality time with family and not sitting behind a desk to trying to learn linux. It should be plug and play. We only have one life here, and it should not be wasted!

Things Linux Needs to Improve on:

1: No command line input- none!
2: No manually editing config files or manually editing any file!
3. Focus more on KISS (keep it simple stupid)
4. No hundred question survey on install.
5. No mounting
6. No typing (emphasize)
7. No compiling, no dependencies, easy install and uninstall,
8. Stop using different command lines for different distributions.
9. Stop bashing a superior Windows Product and focus more on improving yourselves.
10. Bottom Line: Form a Unix Alliance sort of like the Euro-Dollar in order to compete with MS.

SUMMARY:
Contrary from my opinion on Linux; they do have a great product, but their presentation and ease of use renders it useless to average end-users; both workstation and server. They could be a solid competitor against Windows, heck maybe in the future capture half the market share in the world (keep dreaming). If Linux keeps steady on the same path their on now, they will keep losing market shares until it’s down to hobbyist at .01%! I currently have a lot of time on my hand so I am learning my new Linuxbox, (it takes a long time, especially if you have been accustomed to Windows). I use it mainly to store all my important documents, not because Linux is “secure and safe”, but because not many people know how to use it. 

I think to be fair, it should be noted that linux is not backed by billions of dollars and thousands of employees with great benefits.

I think these people behind it (Linux), who donate their passion and free time, have done a fantastic job. I really commend them. The have done great things and they will continue to do so.

BTW, when was the last time you reported a bug to microsoft and the next day you get a hot-fix to try out?

Microsoft ought to do be better than the Linux “community”. You paid lots of your good earned money for windows, office, etc (well most people did..). They have the resources and capability to do better.

Someone in the Ubuntu forums wrote an article saying “Chinese is not ready for the desktop”. It was a sarcastic bit on the whole “Linux is not ready for the desktop”, except they replaced “Linux” with “Chinese”, hence the joke and irony.

I got to toying around with the idea, so here’s the previous commenter’s text, “Chinesed”…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think to be fair, it should be noted that (Chinese) is not backed by billions of dollars and thousands of employees with great benefits.

I think these people behind it (Chinese) who donate their passion and free time, have done a fantastic job. I really commend them. The have done great things and they will continue to do so.

BTW, when was the last time you reported a (dorky phrase) to (the United States) and the next day you get a (hip & fresh saying) to try out?

(the United States) ought to do be better than the (Chinese) “community”. You paid lots of your good earned money for (English) .. (well most people did..). (The United States) has the resources and capability to do better.

Okay. I used openSUSE 10.2 for a week. Easy installation, very stable, 64 bit OS’s can be made to work. The fonts aren’t much to look at and this seems to be a persistent Linux problem. Also, you have to go to the command line to install browser plug-ins and probably other things too.
But the deal breaker is that you probably can’t use your Windows programs with it. Crossover (WINE) works with games and the more popular applications, but if you need an unsupported program you can forget about it

I have gone back my copy Windows XP Pro, which I obtained from the Russian software pirates. I figure I can get three more years out of it. By that time Windows 7, which is supposed to be the 64 bit version that works, will be out.

I have been using Linux for 6 years and haven’t looked back, if you guys THINK windows and yes.. you THINK its better because your are afraid of change then enjoy it you sheep. First how can you even attempt to fix something with no source code, you can’t backup, format and reinstall and what have you gained? There are many GUI programs now that handle most of the remedial tasks of some CLI such as KDE interfacing to mkisofs etc… although if you did take the time to read it.. I can type faster than you can click. Oh and Chris G Window does NOT crash if it is used correctly? and what is that not use it at all? thats how it is.. windows works until you use it? maybe try and do something more with a computer other than porn and solitaire and you will see what us Linux users are talking about. How is windows secure when most people run their computer as administrator? F8 at boot login to admin since most people do not setup a admin pass, I suppose thats the users fault a fanboy like you would say? wow im such a hacker. If windows wasn’t around we would have all learned and used some sort of *NIX duh…. oh and chris g to your “list of linux improvements”

1. There has been a command line input for 30 years since the unix was invented stfu and deal with it
2. manually editing a file is once again faster than clicking through dozens of screens.. dont you get it? 104 keys .. two keys? keyboard/mouse .. here I will spell it out for you since your obviously slow “The Keyboard Is Faster Than The Mouse” I think I only use the mouse for scrolling, image manipulation, window movement.. not for administration
3. RTFMS
4. hundred question survey? what you autistic? I installed sabayon maybe 5-8 question iirc
5. all operating systems mount media in some way shape or form.. of course windows hides this from you .. ever notice the “Safely remove device” for usb devices.. that is UNmount basically duh
6. yea what were we thinking typing at a computer wow your so smart chris g
7. there are many distributions of linux that do not compile and are binary based… dependencies is just the nature of the best… uninstall all your divx and mpeg codecs from windows and now try and play a movie what have you done? omg you removed a dependency! delete your reg while your at it too
8. tell the distro that.. all distros I have tried in the past 6 years have used Bash (are you on drugs?)
9. windows has ruined this world by creating ignorant people and a service market geared at just making more money by fixing a broken product.. I believe windows to be a ticking time bomb set to blow up. In other words where would norton be without viruses .. just my conspiracy theory. Basically I/We aren’t bashing windows.. were speaking the truth
10. Microsoft pays bestbuy and other retailers to display their product top shelf… pretty easy with billions of dollars in nothing but marketing .. funny how they have all the money to promote yet none to make a good product

oh and most distros do have a GUI program installer… I use Gentoo which really is command line based but kuroo has been a nice GUI frontend to portage.. in conclusion… if you like windows you have been brainwashed. Use google

I run OS X on my MacBook. It will only work well with at least 1GB of RAM 1.83Ghz Dual Core 2 Processor, and the 60GB hard drive is rather small.

I tried Linux after using Windows for 23 years. Windows seemed OK first because thats all you knew of. And it still is the most widely used OS and compatibility is not a problem (unlike some problems I have faced with my using OS X).

I also tried using Linux Unbuntu when Windows pissed me off too much. I dunno, it probably is a good OS or probably not. I just couldn’t really figure it out and I haven’t got the time to sit down and figure stuff out on an OS. I use computers to figure other stuff out, not to create more work. But then again everything will have its problems. From computers to cell phones to whatever. Technology will never meet our ever increasing high expectations.

My expectations and desire is to have a computer (be it with Windows, OS X, Linux, all of the above, or none of the above) that is universally compatible with everything, very user friendly (point and click), powerful, good security (but don’t have little pop-ups come up every damn second), and something that can pin point a problem within itself for me. I mean thats what computers and technology are for right? Helping fix things an make things easier for us?

I tracked latest Ubuntus and Mandrivas distros for several years. All the times I got rid of them after a week on average. The latest Kubunt 7.04 I installed yesterday had issues 1) broken X server, fixed by command line and I spent 2 hours to fix it, 2) Broken wireless I am trying for 2 hours now.

The MS excel files are not compatible with any spreadsheet, If a formula is moderately complex, not to say VBA macro, it fails in all Linux numerous spreadshits. Even slides, PPT get corrupt when made in Open Office. Linux Games are so primitive it’s a shame to even look, at them. Who says Linux is stable? If you do not touch windows it is also stable, but any least change will crash Linux and in an unknown place it crashes. The only thing I could use linux- web browsing. But the latest Kubuntu 7.04 will show me no youtube and I can not install Flash Player despite my 3 hours effors

I’ve been using Linux exclusively for years now.
Redhat to Mandrake(Mandriva), and now Ubuntu.

I’ve used micro distro’s like Damn Small Linux, which is great for old hardware. Other micro’s I’ve used include Coyote and Freesco both great for setting up routers and firewalls and turning that boat ancher from 1995 into a useful machine again.

As far as ease of use and installation goes, it simply does not get easier than Ubuntu, and they (Canonical) only keeps making it better and easier. Am I a fanboy for Linux… Probably. Am I a blind follower… no, bottom line, if Microsoft built a superior product at an affordable price I’d switch in an instant. Again the same goes for Mac, they do build a superior product, downside… not at an affordable price, reason for me is I can put together a machine for $1500 slap a copy of Ubuntu Linux on it install my few drivers that are proprietary and I’m golden… equivalent Mac… $5k to $8k and then I have to pay for software that I want to run on top of that.

With Crossover, Cedega, and Wine I virtually want for nothing software wise on my Linux Desktop.

For me bottom line is a set of 3 major variables, I need Productivity/Usability, I need Affordability, I need Stability. That list of “I needs” is in no particular order, they are the 3 things I need, period. And for me Ubuntu currently comes closest to meeting my 3 needs. No its not perfect, as you like to point out “All OS’s Suck”.

I am a Windows user, not by choice but by circumstance as everyone uses it.

I just installed PCLinuxOS from a magazine disc last week as it says it’s just like Windows XP in it’s use (I had a good feeling about this). Installation was a breeze (installed on the second hard disc), thumbs up so far.

My experience after a week:

1. Why can’t I chose the defult system? It defults to Linux but I want Windows to be the defult.
2. Windows XP is quicker (even with all the crap).
3. I can’t install my DLink 302g modem, USB or Ethernet (so there are definitely no viruses as I cannot get on the web).
4. I can’t install any program!!!! I have trawled through the internet and every tutorial for installing just gives me more errors, bloody dependencies!!!
5. It looks really nice. 🙂
6. No crashes in PCLinuxOS but my Windows hasn’t crashed for over a year either.
7. I hate the console (even though I was quite good at DOS…in the 80’s!!!), why can’t it have self executable installation files like Windows and Mac?
8. Where is a manual that will tell me definitively how to do things!!!!

I want to use Linux but Linux doesn’t want me to use it, this is my third time in 8 years I have tried a distro of Linux (I had a developer friend who said I had to get it 8 years ago) but I’m wondering if 8 years is too long to work out how to install a simple game of Pingu?

The user should not understand the inner things of OS. Its damn boring it is like accounting where you know tons of conceptually simple and pretty dumb rules/facts and call yourself a professional. Engineers and scientists are assumed to be amateurs then, but these big 4 accountancies are named professional services firms. Back to the Linux shit. One apologist of Linux wrote that these are complex tasks for adepts that make him love Linux. As example he suggests finding all files ending with “.txt” and containing “foo” in the 3rd line. Ohh how pointless and dumb this task may seem for real life. Not reserving to scornful comparisons and stupid analogies imagine the need for a task like this. At the same time real things as MIDI composing, making docs and presentations just suck. Fonts are bad, device support like wireless and touchpad sucks outright. If you use computer to check system logs or find why your modem crash then OK, you are on the right track. This tinkering is pointless for most people doing real things. Dell’s sales of Ubuntu boxes may be good for pirates. I once bought Linux laptop and installed windows after a month of tinkering.

Linux is crap, it seriously needs to learn how to make decent partition and installation software without bitching for 3 hours because I didn’t specify the file system (which I did at least 15 times, in every way possible, using every type of file system that existed). If Linux thinks it’s going to install itself on my whole hard drive and take over my Win XP partition, it can go suck my balls.

I just bought another computer the other day and it came with this pour excuse for a OS called Windows Vista hmmmmm. What can is say good for it……. its got really cool widgets and other worthless crap. Its got this really neat thing they call aero which I haven’t even found a use for. Even with 1 gig of RAM is slow as hell. It cannot run software that ran just fine in XP. XP was faster on both of my systems. One is a HP dv6000 and the other is a compaq v6000. So I said stick it Billyboy. used Boot n Nuke ,which by the way loads a linux kernel when booting, wiped that sorry ass OS off my drive. This being the only way I found to get it off the system. Then used my Unbuntu 7.04 disk that I had downloaded from their site. The only problem I had was that I have the 1390 wifi card in both systems. This was a easy fix just used NDISWRAPPER to get it running. All in all that took a blazing 10 min. oh and by the way this is my first linux install which I found easier and faster than Windows XP. Linux even boots faster that XP and lightyears faster than that crappy Vista did. anyways I switched to linux on both systems have intend to never again play billybob rip off artist for his shitty OS

I recently switched from XP Pro SP2 to Ubuntu (I’ve used Red Hat back when it was free, years ago, but switched back to Windows 98 because I couldn’t figure out how to do a lot of stuff in RH), and it was like getting two new computers, they ran so much faster. It was all graphical install, and the install was actually easier than for XP.

Having a command line is great. I grew up using DOS 3.11 back in the ’80s, and I remember being sad at losing a pure DOS environment with Windows (even though DOS is nothing compared to bash, it was nice to have the increased control).

Windows is all about opaqueness. If something hangs (which it does many times), I’ll have no idea why. When something hangs in Linux, I can usually open a log file, or turn on logging, or switch to a console window, or run the program again in verbose mode, and figure out where it hangs, Google the error message or the point of the problem, and find the solution. I can’t do that in Windows.

With compiling and dependencies comes nightmares, but with a package installer like in Ubuntu, there is no need, as long as there is a package for the program (and many, many more programs are packaged than in the past). It takes care of all the dependencies, and I’ve never had an error installing packages.

There are an estimated 8 million users on Ubuntu today, and it’s supposedly the closest to XP in feel and ease of use. The nice thing is that if one IS a power user, they have the ability to use Linux to its greatest potential. Windows makes it almost impossible to do whatever Microsoft doesn’t want you to do (especially with Vista).

Linux is free. It costs nothing, if you want to get it for free. Windows is not, and is in fact very expensive. You talk about coming with no features with Linux…Ubuntu came with OpenOffice (also free), while many Windows machines will ship with a trial of Microsoft Office…at the end of the 6 month trial (or whatever it is), fork out $200, or do without….or download OpenOffice.

Microsoft pumps almost no money into R&D. They are using the NT kernel designed in the early ’90s, and NTFS is 1993 technology!!! Their money goes into marketing, bug fixes, and security updates. When you talk about keeping your system updated (with Windows), you’re not kidding, considering it seems like there were an average of 6 security updates a day for XP. I’ve had some in Ubuntu, but probably an average of 1 a week.

Try opening a non-admin account in XP and doing something useful. It’s almost impossible. By being logged into an admin account by default (which is what Windows does), it reduces the security of the system by a HUGE factor. That’s why viruses are so effective in Windows, and not in Linux.

Linux is hard to use, but that is changing quickly with time. Some users want something that works, and sometimes things don’t in Linux, but usually they can be fixed. If something doesn’t work in Windows (and trust me, a lot of times it doesn’t), usually you’re SOL.

The cost is the biggest factor. A Windows license is a couple hundred dollars, at least, while Linux is free. For me, if I HAD to pay the same price for Linux as for Windows Vista, I would BUY Ubuntu. Vista is a huge resource hog (and I thought XP was bad when it came out), is unsecure, buggy, and has DRM built-in (which right now is making sure that a lot of authorized content doesn’t work, because of bugs).

Microsoft products are out of date, inefficient, and overpriced….but they ARE (in general) easy to use. One exception is QuickBooks, which has a very non-intuitive interface, and is a horrible piece of crap. Ubuntu, in my opinion, was easier to install than XP, by a long shot. If more Linux distros head this way, we are looking at a huge spread of free (open) software.

Other parts of the world don’t share the Microsoft addiction that America does. Europe is well aware of Microsoft’s unethical business practices, and is trying to stop the spread of their products and marketing strategy their (and are mostly succeeding, due to the fact that most foreigners realize that expensive Microsoft products are garbage, while many free OSes are better).

“Windows comes out of the box packaged with a whole slue of services.”

You’re right, and on my laptop, which came with a LOAD of bloatware, I had over 88 processes running on boot (with XP Home). The restore disc refused to install just XP, without the other bundled software. I actually installed an illegal version of XP Pro just to avoid the bundled software, and trimmed down the services to where I could boot with about 23 processes and full functionality. However, with 512 MB of RAM, it would still use all this after a clean boot, plus quite a bit of a swap file.

When I installed Ubuntu, I made a 1.5 GB swap partition. I later realized this was way, way too big. With 15 programs running, 26 tabs open in 3 Firefox windows, Evolution e-mail, a couple PDF files, running mprime at 95% CPU usage, my memory load would be about 256 MB of RAM….and NO swap usage. If Windows could give me that kind of performance….I mean, I was stunned at how absolutely low the memory usage was, and that’s with wireless internet going, a bittorrent client, and an IM program, too. Linux is amazing when it comes to performance.

I hope you have the time to stop typing in your shell and read my comment. You have definitely proved that linux is not an OS of choice.

I am a software engineer by profession and I was taught 4 years in college to be unbiased to technolgy. Whatever works, shall prevail. I come from both windows/*nix/solaris background. At work I use both linux and windows to make a living. And this is my take.

Linux got its sweet years to progress. The amount of time that was given to linux, within that time frame, windows had already reached windows 95.

Bill Gates started with few people and stolen technology to make windows happen. Windows wasnt backed up by billions in the beginning. Heck linux got thousands of people working for free and they cant still make it happen. Something obviously is wrong. The thing that is wrong is people like you. How many words does an average person type in a minute? I am sure you type faster than me but I can install IIS with my clicks faster than you will ever type and install Apache.

When is the the last time you went to a webpage and downloaded something and installed it and it worked on linux? I am sure maybe you can or have but us stupid 90% of people cant. Well we couldnt do that either in windows back in old dos days. But man, that was like what odd 15 years ago? Its 2007 now dude, why are you dragging us back to the past? Kinda makes it clear why windows is making billions and linux isnt right?

Oh yeah sweet FreeBSD. got its own repositories and package management to install. How lovely. Well try asking your dad how nice the package management is if all he wants to install do is install a media player to listen to some songs. Chances are that old fella will never figure it out. So guess what will happen next time he goes to bestbuy to get a new PC. Wont matter where on top shelf windows paid to have their PCs displayed, he will get something with windows on it.

Oh WOW linux ALSO has a GUI installer. Funny how you had to tell it so loud so people knew about it. I am sure a fast typer like you “found” it out soon. Kinda ironic that you even had to mention that linux has a GUI installer from where I stand. Like people actually have to go and FIND it has a GUI installer?

My very very old hardware is running Slackware now. I had “emotional” attachment to it. Most tech people have something like that. I didnt want to throw it out in the dumpster. But then thats old hardware. Life is so easy with a Quad core processor and 4 gigs of RAM now with GPU of 512MB. And it was cheap too. But then wait I think my GPU has more memory than your PC. Once again I must remind you that the year is 2007. Hardware is cheap. And with good hardware you have GREAT user experience. Those days have long gone when hardware was expensive. Now you want me to go back to my 486 machine with 64MB RAM and shitty user experience just cause linux works on it and my windows vista wont?

You were right about one thing though. Unix has been around for a very long time and had great professionals work on it. And it was all command line based. However, these are the very same people who worked so hard so we had easy user interfaces we had today. Its when linux came in, amateurs like you got involved and started giving everything a bad name. Unix was good then and still is good now. But it was good for only what it did and it definitely was not common users’ experience. Its sad when fast typing scripties like you show up and suddenly claim that linux is better than windows. How exactly are you comparing them?

Linux got me through a lot of things though in college. Developing kernel patches, rewriting kernel modules to accept hyperthreading in a cluster environment etc etc. Now after a hard day of school, is it too much to ask for if I want to get on my home computer and double click on my windows media player and listen to my favorite song to give my average brain a rest? Oh but wait, you type faster than us.

NASA uses two OS of their choice to get their work done. Windowds XP and Solaris. How did I know? Well it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Goto NASA Tv if you ever havent. The right top big screen infront of the controllers is using windows xp and it usually takes the delimeters of all vectors of the space station or the shuttle and provides that sweet 3d view of the object they are monitoring. When they zoom on the flight director, you can clearly see he is on a Solaris desktop. Oh wait, he is using GUI stuff. Maybe he can’t type as fast as you do. Now why didnt they go for linux? not cause MS and Sun gave them a good deal. heck they dont care about money when they get all our tax dollars for free! they did so cause they wanted a technology which has proven itself to be easy and less time consuming for mission critical jobs.

oh and please as your super fast typing community to work on just ONE DISTRO. kinda makes it look like they cant get their mind set up. some contributer gets pissed and leaves and next you know he got his own distro out. is it that easy?

“I am a software engineer by profession and I was taught 4 years in college to be unbiased to technolgy….oh and please as your super fast typing community to work on just ONE DISTRO. kinda makes it look like they cant get their mind set up. some contributer gets pissed and leaves and next you know he got his own distro out. is it that easy?”

Shawn, after reading your comment (rant) I think you should call your college and ask for your money back. I can’t believe you actually get paid to work in IT.

Hey now just because the “software engineer” is lazy doesn’t mean that the college needs to give him his money back just means that he should go work at McDonalds and make me my Big Mac forget my fries and only fill my cup half full. He dude like you said NASA doesnt care about waisting our money of course they went with Windows if you had unlimited access to money that wasnt yours you would go spend every dime you could too. HMMMMMMMM! wait just minute software engineer you dont by chance work for BIlly boy do you?????

I am sorry for that piece of my comment. I read it later and did find it inappropriate. However, I was partially correct. Linux is not and never was an entity. In enterprise level anyone would go for Red Hat and Suse and Personally I think they are great MS competitors because you have a set of people working on it, in a very systematic form. Recently a linux user (a co-worker) mentioned that its laughable to expect all distros have a single solution to a problem at the same time. I gave it some thought and I agreed. Afterall the kernel was same but nothing else after that. Given some time anyone could convert ubuntu to a full blown enterprise category OS minus the proprietary BS. But you have to understand the whole corporate urgency too. You have bunch of MS servers and you are thinking of consolidating and some options at looking at other low cost OS and you have a “month”. I doubt it’ld be any easy. Afterall who got the time to hire a bunch of experts and go to kernel level and write up on it. You might wonder why I am even bringing this issue up. Well after all linux is the one penetrating the MS market share. Compatibilty, migration, ease of use ARE an issue here. Ask any company who are all about MS store about Linux and they say Linux is just plain simple hard, hard to get people who are well versed and trained on it and once you train them if you hire any, the knowledge transfer is equally hard. Now that doesnt make the people working there already any dumb. Afterall everyone got their own way of making their own bread and butter. it pisses me of when someone compares MS and Linux. It pisses me off when someone comes and tells me some linux is better than XP or Vista. I mean what the hell are you really comparing here? These linux people who claim and all that are hardly working in a corporation where they can actually judge what is going on? Sitting on your chair running a flavor of linux and calling it OMG good is not really appropriate. You might get your mind set up on one flavor of linux which you have fine tuned atr wee hours of the night and its fine for you now. Well, what about the new user who just learnt to get it installed and working? Mind you later are the majority of the people. I cant even name all the linux distros anymore. And as far as asking my college for my money back. Well, I think every graduate who had a major related to computers should go and ask for their money back because what they learn in the freshman year is already obsolete when they are in their junior years.

@vistasucked

I did not work for McD’s or MS. NASA has got the most mission critical systems running than all the mission critical systems on this planet summed together. If they can use XP, then I am sure XP is not as bad as some people of the Linux community claims.

I recently tried Ubuntu since so many people espouse the benefits of Linux. Here is my experience in handy bullet form, for anyone who gives a rat’s arse:

* Installation was very easy.
* The user interface looked nice but was buggy.
* RAM usage spiked mysteriously during idle periods and eventually brought the system to a halt.
* Native Linux applications are woefully inadequate for business use.
* Native gaming on Ubuntu is a sad joke.
* The GUI kept breaking and eventually would not restart.

I ditched Ubuntu and tried 4 other Linux distros with the same disappointing results. It was at that point that I realized Linux sucks donkey balls.

“NASA has got the most mission critical systems running than all the mission critical systems on this planet summed together. If they can use XP, then I am sure XP is not as bad as some people of the Linux community claims.”

There’s something wrong with this statement….NASA might use XP for some of its operations, but XP is not a real-time operating system. For its ‘mission critical’ operations, a real-time operating system is a prerequisite…Perhaps I’m mistaken?

I personally cannot imagine why any regular user would want to use Linux. I turned 15 the first of this month and i started using Windows 95 when I was about 6 or 7. I know that had loads of crashes, but now that I have Windows XP I find that crashes are extremely rare for me. I believe that for regulars users its just better to use windows, since almost everything that is done in linux can be done in windows (The only thing I ever needed linux for was raw sockets, and normal users dont do this mostly, and I could have done it in windows using WinPCcap, but back then I only knew Perl). I have grown to like windows for its wide compatibility and ease of use. I have seen many articles talking about how windows sucks because its so easy and dumbed down, but I do not see any advantage in making things overly complex for the end user. I remember when I tried Ubuntu Linux 7.04 and tried installing a program (Limewire) the install failed halfway, so i tried to end process, but it failed. Then I restarted my computer about 3 times, but the limewire install process never ended. In the end i had to reformat since I could not install anything else because apparently you can only run an install thing one at a time. This would probably be easy to solve by a long time linux user who knows loads of shell commands, but not to a novice linux user, whereas in windows a restart would have done the trick. In reality, the only advantages of linux in my opinion are that it is open source and that it is free. Linux users also often talk to me about how windows shell fails and how searching for files owns on linux. Well, if that is the major advantage of Linux, then I think I rather stick with windows and learn an easy programming language such as perl to take care of shell scripting and file searches. Apart from being easier to use, windows also supports basically all the good video games out xD.

Linux, in therms of operating systems, is an unpolished turd. If you are having problems with reliability and the speed of your computer, YOU are probably the one at fault. Since most of you are too poor to afford an operating system, might I suggest a decent college education, rather than sitting in your basement playing with your tarballs. LOL

^ Amen. And might I add that any OS wherein you must jump through two hundred hoops to (unreliably at best) mount a simple thumbdrive does not belong in any serious discussion of good computing. As they say, you get what you pay for.

@ Manny.
Theres no viruses for it because no one would waste their time making malware for an OS that so little people use..it is simply not fun or powerful. And you must realize that usually, malware infections in computers are due to the user. In all the time I have used Windows, I have only once gotten a keylogger, and that was due to my own failure of judgement. Since that time I have only downloaded software I am sure i need and I am sure I can trust, with the result being that I never have had any security problems since then.
@ Sovios Falchion Romantic
To open my thumbdrive on Windows I just
1. Plugin drive
2. goto My Computer from my Desktop
3. Right click on my thumb drive and choose explore
If you are too lazy to do less than 5 clicks…I cannot imagine what arguments you have to support linux…

For me, Linux, Free BSD, Sun Solaris and Mac OSX are really precious jewelry… I’ve been a Computer guy my whole adult life and since 1984 I can tell that the evolution of computing (hardware and sofware) it had been fantastic… Windows was the leader of all times with its OS… but now… the monopolistic empire has moved and new technologies are improving the robust old OS. Mac and Sun Microsystems used UNIX as the core platform of their businesses… so they are achieving tremendous victories using UNIX in solid Desktops really affortable for a lot of users, Linux a free alternative (in most of the cases) brings the solid and robust platform of its cousin Unix to the rest of the people that can not afford to pay more that 150 us dlls for a OS… (of course… I am not talking about Microsoft)… The competitiveness is good so far and now hardware companies need to be open minded and let their systems use those OS.

Oh how we all just cant get enough of the ol’ Windows vs Linux vs OS X vs BSD vs “insert name of OS here” debate (smell the sarcasm yet).
Someone comes along and says “Well the one ‘I’ use is better because I have this piece of anecdotal evidence”. And then the choir pipes in “You fool….the one ‘I’ use is better because my anecdotes are better then your anecdotes”. And so on….and so on….and so forth….and so on….and………..echo.
Here’s why Windows sucks; Microsoft. Need I say more? of course not….and neither should you. But just like you, I’m gonna. 😀
Problems with Windows; New versions have always placed increased and almost unrealistic demands on hardware. Security security security. Their need, for some reason, to include more and more applications integrated into the os (Why include cd/dvd burner support when almost anyone who actually wants decent cd/dvd handling capabilities will still buy a third party product. This is actually not only a problem with windows, but every linux distro I have ever used. There’s a tangent to go on. Clutter. People have gotten spoiled by os packaging. All this extra crap that comes with an os that really isn’t part of an os. Why should Windows come with Internet Explorer when just about any good browser can be downloaded later for free? Well, of course, Billy wants us to use his over-patched version of Mosaic. I mean, they at least have a reason though….market share. They have stock holders to please. But, then, why must every version of Linux have at least two browsers. And why are these browsers often incomplete. most distros I have tried come with the usual Firefox/Konqueror combo. Do I get flash/java support right out of the box? Not usually. These guys cram at least two or three similar apps for each category yet don’t include flash/java? trying to keep the size down? shame on you.
Lets talk about stability for a moment, because a lot of linux geeks like to point out how unstable Windows is. Where do they get this? When was the last time these people used Windows, 1998? A lot has changed since then. Windows instability these days, just like Linux’s instability (and yes it exists, stop fooling yourselves) has mostly been due to poorly coded 3rd party apps. Truth is, a Windows XP box can ran error free just as long as a Linux box can.
Back to the argument of security. It has long been no big secret that Windows is infamous for being less secure. On the same note, Mac OS X has been fabled as being “virus proof”. Virus Proof!?. That’s laughable. Lets have a short lesson in computer science for a moment. Any computer that runs executable code can become infected with a virus. So yes, if some day all the crackers and virus kiddies decide to concentrate on breaking security in Mac OS X, Linux, what have you, or should for some self defeating purpose decide they want a virus that will infect that massive, What, 9-13% of the computing market…watch your butts. Really, the biggest problem Windows seems to have with security is it’s users. Linux doesn’t want to allow you to be a stupid user. Windows doesn’t give a damn. The new security features of Vista. Cancel or Allow. Great! what we’ve always needed. But riddle me this Vista apologists. The same moron who loves to just open executable attachments that random strangers send to them via email are somehow gonna benefit from “Cancel or Allow”? Let’s see….I am an idiot….I want to run this neato attachment by the name of “win32_Hybris”. Oh my…unlike XP….its asking Cancel or Allow…whatever will I do? “allow” click……..
Linux is still seen by the unwashed masses as a hobby/developer os. So of course these guys aren’t gonna be so dense. Windows appeals to the mass market. Microsoft doesn’t care if their users are smarter. It would probably be to their detriment to appeal to the average Linux fan. So long as Windows has a market monopoly, it will always have security issues.
But wait..I havent shown Mac OS X enough hate. Wouldn’t want all of you trendy Macaddicts to feel left out. The thing that sucks most about Mac? Everything. Those stupid commercials….their need to make you feel “cool” or “different” for using their overpriced (now) IBM clones.
Apple is just as dirty a company as Microsoft. Yes, I said it. For the longest time, Apple has tried to market the Macs as high end computers. What is high end about them? Must be the price. At least they finally realized that the PowerPC platform is a piece of crap. Finally, they got a clue and switched to Intel. Well hell, a Mac can even run Windows now. Wait!!! A Mac can run windows. Lets see……parts of a MacIntel….you have the motherboard with an Intel chipset…and of course the Intel cpu….A sata HD, ddr2 ram modules….a psu…ect…honey, call the kids into the living room for a family discussion. Kids, A mac is just a PC.
What makes a Mac so different from a much cheaper PC then? That groovy little chip inside them ofcourse. See…there is a chip inside the Mac that OS X looks for. Without it, it refuses to run. So does this chip somehow make a mac magically better then a PC? Nope…not really. Just a hardware form of DRM. What this really means is instead of a capable machine, you get a crippled OS that would otherwise run on cheaper, better, more diverse, standard PC hardware. Don’t believe me? Check out the OSx86 project. With a little time and some warez, you too can have a MacIntel on regular PC hardware. You could have a MacinDell. 😀

Looked at Linux a few years ago – gave up as I couldn’t get it installed. I was baffled by the concept of the swap file (or whatever Linux calls it) sitting on it’s own partition of a fixed size.
This seemed like a relic from the dark ages. I really expect a dynamic swap file controlled by the OS. Its just….er….up-to-date.
Please tell me they have got past things like that. (and PLEASE don’t start telling me that that is a “good thing” as I don’t react well to spin)

I am very knowledgeable of operating systems, especially Windows. I thought I’d give Linux a really good try this year because of all the virus, spam and updates that Microsoft shovels to us. But, it didn’t work. I tried several different distro’s: Simply Mepis 6.5, Geubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 7.10, gOS, Fedora and PCOsLinux. While most of them worked fairly well, all had their faults. Gnome versions (Ubuntu/Gebuntu/Fedora/gOS) could load the proper printer drivers for my Canon MP510 and multimedia was fine, but Flash wouldn’t work at all, Firefox was slow (even with disabling IPV6) and the desktop is extremely slow no matter what tweaks I did. The KDE versions (Mepis/PCOsLinux) were very fast, flash was installed correctly, browsers worked great, multimedia OK, but I couldn’t get Gutenprint drivers to work correctly for my printer and enabling Samba on the KDE’s was very difficult. In fact, PCOsLinux crashed twice because it failed to update properly. I gave up after PCOsLinux and went back to Windows where I don’t have to worry about setting up my printer and hardware items, don’t have to download codecs to play DVD’s, CD’s and MP3’s, flash player is completely compatible with Windows as well as Quicktime (if needed). Finally, a lot of Linux users are saying that one of the reasons that don’t use Windows is because of the security updates, antivirus and spam issues…one thought….an initial installation of nearly every distro I did ended up installing from 80 to 100 security updates before the installation was complete.

I am not a true geek and I can manipulate files and/or codes to get what I need, however, I don’t feel like should have to write a complete program to get hardware to work properly on an operating system. FYI, there are issues with manufacturers not providing drivers that run in Linux, so beware!

To me, Linux distro’s and Vista do have something in common, not all are completely compatible with today’s hardware. I’m sticking with XP Pro, it works great! Don’t think the grass is greener just because something else looks better because it’s free…there is a reason it’s free.

Very interesting discussion here. I have taken part in similar discussions on several forums…. and it’s always the same. Linux fanboys vs. Windows fanboys and Mac fanboys vs. the universe. I myself am neither a software engineer nor even an advanced user. I just have a computer that i built myself (because i’m really a hardware guy – not just with computers but with anything that consists of minimum two parts and a connecting piece, i.e. anything technical) and i use this computer for day-to-day stuff – web surfing, e-mail, music, videos, converting and editing of those, downloading porn and rarely playing a game of Need For Speed, the ONLY game i have and play.

I have been using Windows since 95. All of them! 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, now Vista. And apart from ME i have been happy with each one of them (98 and 98SE came with computers i bought, at that time i didn’t build my own). ME was the only one that crashed all by itself every then and wgen, all the others i had to do something stupid to bring them down. XP i had to deliberately install Nvidia drivers for my ATI graphics to make it show me a BSOD, and on Vista even that fails, it just boots with a generic driver stating that the installed one doesn’t function!

Linux, on the other hand (experience with RedHat, SuSE 6.4, SuSE 10.0, Some “Mandriva” edition, Ubuntu 6.04 and Ubuntu 6.10) is way too “geeky” for me. Guys, if i want to use a command line to get a piece of hardware to work the way it should, i take that 386 DX 33 and put DOS 6.22 on it. Nostalgic hardware for nostalgic OS! I don’t want to see a flashing cursor on black background, knowing that inside the box hums an AMD 64bit CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive!

Now sure enough Linux has GUI install, and specially Ubuntu has a very beautiful desktop that i would love to keep for everyday use. But then – i have TV-out on my graphics card, i PAID for that feature and actually use it! Because my computer is my video/DVD player. So it’s hooked up to the TV set to watch the flicks there while i run the office crap on the small LCD. Works excellent in anything M$. But neither Ubuntu could figure out how to get video to leave BOTH ports on that ATI card at the same time! I had either TV or monitor. Fullstop! And when i then changed from my old 15″ CRT to the shiny 19″ LCD, Ubuntu flat refused to boot – wrong monitor configuration, of course! Took me a while to figure out how to get some reaction, namely the command prompt – and then, what next? No idea!

So booted into Windows (XP back then) and no hassle – started right up, CONFIGURED ITSELF to the resolution it had detected on the monitor (which is on the odd side, not being a widescreen) and worked flawlessly. Searched for my Linux-issue and found – tons of possible solutions, NONE OF WHICH WORKED!! So it was format and reinstall of Ubuntu. And that for a new MONITOR. No, thanks. Plus i had the same issues – software install IMPOSSIBLE even after figuring out what to do with tar-balls, it wouldn’t work and something as simple as updating firefox from 1.5 to 2.0 made for another unbootable Linux and need to re-install the whole OS.

Now Mac OS. Believe me, having used THAT as well, i would have it in an instant. Why not? Wait a minute…….. a quick configuration via Apple’s excellent website…. ok, my dream-Mac would cost only 5.800 dollars, plus taxes. That’s a cool 200.000 Baht in my country and thereby just slightly below a TWO-YEARS-INCOME of the average worker here!! Now a PC with similar or identical hardware specs i could build for close to 35.000 Baht. I know what i am talking about because i already built such a machine for my boss himself, none less, and he says he never had a better computer in his entire life. And THAT is why i am NOT using Mac OS! Because it will only run on the 200.000 Baht machine which i won’t be able to afford for the next 250 years (it sure runs on the cheapest Mac too, but that one still costs as much as 10 equally-spec’ed home-built PC’s, and if i want such low performance i can as well go looking for that 386 again, with DOS on it).

Conclusion: I love Mac OS but can’t afford the machinery to run it. That is Apple’s fault – would they build their machines in simple grey boxes and slash 75% of the price to bring it closer to the reality, then charge the same for their OS as M$ does, they would have more than 4% market share. Sadly, then the virus coders would be on it too – there is no such thing as a “virus-proof OS”.

I love Linux because it’s the most affordable (free, that is) and runs on the machinery i chose myself. It’s beautiful (Ubuntu at least) and, once running (!!), just as productive as any other OS that is running. HOWEVER the “geek factor” is too high – people are used to point-and-click a download and then point-and-click to install and then either see it working or, AT LEAST, get an error message explaining why it doesn’t. Getting no response whatsoever and finding out on next reboot that the system is fucked up doesn’t help. And command lines truly belong into last century and should become forgotten. Why did they invent the mouse, then?

I love Windows, because it too runs on the machinery i chose. It costs shitloads of $$ (my genuine Vista Ultimate was 2 1/2 months salary too), but i will be using it for the years to come so that doesn’t matter too much. Therefor i get point-and-click for anything i wish and things work either out of the box or by popping in the CD, click “install” and let it run for a couple of minutes. New hardware is detected automatically and simply WORKS. And if i really really REALLY want to, i can still issue the command “cmd” and get my command line, and my old DOS knowledge still helps me figuring things out. But i truly don’t need that as even error logs are accessible by point-and-click. But first there have to be error logs, and strangely on that machine i slapped together for myself Vista doesn’t seem to need to generate errors, it runs solid like a rock and faster than Ubuntu ever did on that same machine (no BS here, just facts).

Final words: I’ll stick to Windows until Apple either offers a version of their OS that runs on MY hardware OR offers hardware that cost no more than mine to run it on, in which case i will gladly pay as much for OSX than i paid for Vista. . Linux is no viable alternative due to it’s geeky nature and backwards technology. I want to work with my computer to get my WORK done, not to get the COMPUTER going.

I dual boot linux and windows, my main OS in linux because almost any software for windows there a linux program that can do the same thing, if u look for it. If all you do is watch video and check email then Linux mint is great..looks nice and it come with flash and all other codecs preinstalled so you dont have to. Linux right now doesn’t have virus so no need to worry.

But i do use windows for games because Microsoft owns the game market right now but with programs like wine u can play the most popular games for windows on linux

I think that it all depends on the final user. At the end it is them for who this systems were built. If you are an unexperienced, unlearning (if that exists), and not wanting to spend too much effort just sending some emails, and storing your files in a computer. Then probably Windows is going to be your option since it comes out of the box in almost all systems, if not all. So yes, this is a monopolistic view we are looking at, but it’s like that. If someone wants to go a little more advanced, or maybe just go different, they will probably choose Linux, since it’s like the next most popular thing after Windows. Most people think that Linux users are always techy, and sophisticated. Well that’s not the case. Linux users are like people riding a BMW instead of a Mercedes Benz. I don’t know if i spelled those wrong, and i don’t want to start another discussion here about if BMW is better than Benz, but you get the point. It’s just a matter of preference. There’s also the people who use Mac, and *BSD. But I don’t see anyone using *BSD wihtout being at least a little Geeky and Techy. But yeah… My point is that it’s all about the final user and what they want their system for. I really doubt anyone is going to look into this post i made… but hey, i just wanted to make my point of view, known. 😛

I’m switching from Windows to Mac OS X, but the notion that being successful in terms of marketing and sales is unethical is just ridiculous. MS made people “need” their software by first getting business and government to use it, which in turn made it more beneficial to be used in other markets. There is nothing unethical about anything they’ve done. They made their product essentially a necessity. It so happened, there really hasn’t been much to compete with it before Apple’s rise. I guess that’s unethical too.

That seriously might be the dumbest statement I’ve read this year. Of course, it came from a Linux fanboy. They seem completely out of touch with reality, so it’s not a surprise.

Tried Ubuntu on my laptop and was left with a worthless machine. Had to go back to windows XP. Many applications would not work and it could not use the USB memory sticks, play music or DVDs and the wireless internet connection was no longer working. I tried for 2 weeks to get Linux to run properly and many late night evenings fixing problems. I have better ways to spend my time. Maybe in a few years a better more refined version will be available. Also all but one periphal device failed to work with linux even though downloaded software patches to fix problem.

As per usual the Linux nerds fail to realise that not everyone loves computers or even cares about them outside of their real purpose A TOOL FOR GETTING THINGS DONE.

The average computer user does NOT want to have to program something to make it work. They don’t want to have to **** around for hours trying to find drivers for unsupported devices. They don’t want to have to **** around finding alternative software programs that are linux friendly.

Another thing that the Linux nerds don’t realise, which is understandable because they are nerds and not businessmen, is that ultimately computers and indeed all technological devices should just run. Most people can’t fix a car, and they don’t need to. The ultimate goal with computers should be to have the thing just plain work and do what you want it to do.

Microsoft, like them or not, are organised and driven and SMART. They realised long ago that the ultimate goal is what I wrote above. To have a “average joe” friendly OS that the user doesn’t have to tweak to make work. Not to mention that they are an organised concerted effort and build all their software to intergrate with each other.

Meanwhile back in nerd camp their are constant feuds and splits within software projects. In fact, the very things that Linux nerds voice as positives for Linux are actually negatives from a viability and economic stand point. The hundreds of different distros HURT Linux as a choice for “average joe” users.

From a business standpoint and talking from personal experience, my company opted against Linux solutions after doing a company wide analysis of a Linux replacement and rollout. The dollars saved initially on “free” software is a drop in the ocean compared to how much money we would lose on staff re-training and technical support.

Microsoft looks at the issues I have listed because they are a serious business. The Linux nerds are just nerds doing their nerd stuff and bragging to the world how l33t they are and how “dumb” windows users are.

If the Linux users were really so l33t they would move out of Mom’s basement and start looking at it from a business and “average joe” point of view. Until they do Linux is going nowhere.

…But they do want to pay for anti-virus software that does nothing to keep them safe and then pay a local shop to clean it up or reload it.. Or worse take it to Best Buy and be ripped off. They do want to hand microsoft and anyone else who knows anything about computers and wants to look all of their information. WIndows users love having their identity stolen. It’s only because of how stupidly simple Windows is that Windows users are so stupid. FYI most of those cool Windows programs you download for free online that are so easy are actually malware. I have literally installed Linux on over 500 computers that worked out of the box only having to configure codecs, flash, java… which guess what has to be done in Windows too! Bashing something online that you know too little about to use is just like a brainwashed “stupid” (for lack of a better word I truly do not mean to offend anyone) Windows user. Use your computer as the TOOL that you so describe it as and educate yourself, you’ll find actually Linux is really easy and people will help you learn to fix things without charging you a million dollars and fixing it for you like MS geeks.

I just spent a week trying to get wireless to work. My line of work pays $60-80 an hour. So I’ve just lost about a $1k or two.

And it’s not just me. There’s lots of people still trying to get something as incredibly lame as wireless to work and spending vast amounts of time doing so.

I like the “feel” of linux and the command line and Gnome but it simply does not work.

Very very sad indeed. Totally demoralised atm and I have to give it all up to be Windows centric which I don’t like but I simply have no choice otherwise I will end up one of these 40 year olds living with Mommy.

The whole “it just works” mantra of the Linux community is a blatant lie which makes them no less a snake oil salesman than what they accuse Microsoft of
being.

I am completely disgusted. It wasn’t just this past week I have wasted there’s been a hell of a lot of time before that too which would have been infinitely better spend simply getting things done.

It’s all subjective. Every posters’ view is their personal opinion to have. They just can’t make others do as they do as well as they say. I’ve used Windows since back in the 3.1 days at work, 2k at home, and now XP at work and home. Very familiar with its workings, both by reading boxes, magazines and forums for questions and answers. I’ve dabbled with Linux since Redhat 6.2, following the product thru to it’s Fedora forking up to version 8, and briefly used OpenSuSe and Mandrake aside. That’s my journey, and in it, I’ve stayed primarily with Windows because everything I’ve worked with works with it, and my experience, my software, carries back and forth between work and home seamlessly. I’ve installed Fedora on work PCs that I’ve had to re-install Windows as an escape to for when malicious virus writers decide to unleash their hatred on the OS or their scheme for zombies, but it’s not the primary OS on the box.

I love Linux for its strong points and hate it as much for its shortcomings. Security is its prime strong point, having to edit configurations manually on things as simple as video resolution or the loathe of commercial proprietary yet popularly used media formats on free and open OS are the hate points. Either way, it’s not made the OS my prime system.

Should people change their OS. It depends on what they want, what they get out of what they have, and whether what other say really matters to them. So how it’s said or said at all is very important. I haven’t seen a Linux advertisement on tv, few in print, and nothing outside of a tech periodical. Is that salesmanship? Can you have a really good product but not advertise it, and hope to cross some sales point, some marketshare magic number, just on word of mouth alone? And then be angry on proprietary commercial entities who do? Personally, it sounds like religious envy and spite, to a degree.

I remember my youth with ZX Spectrum: Load “” every kid knew that! to load a stupid game.
lerning sinclair basic or machine code? nobody was interested. I learned because I wanted to learn more about computers and how to program .

If you want to write some text and play some games get windows, if you want to learn about computers get Linux.
that’s my point of view. simply.

I decided to try linux ubuntu 7.10, and, I find it very hard to use; I´ve read a lot of documentation, and still can´t understand many things.
I agree that should be focus on the final user, for a simple user like myself, its hard to write on the command line for almost everthing, to install or unistall, or to compile a package. What I dont understand, its why they make it too hard, I read in a lot of blogs, an “invitation” to migrate to linux, thats its a safe so, etc, ok, let´s try it…they dont tell you that you have to know a lot of programming stuff, it takes a lot of learning, and if you have the time, its ok.

If the porpouse of linux developers its to be a competition for microsoft, I think that a simple final user will be gracefull.

Somebody on a help forum told me, that why I was complaining, instead of reiciving help. And, when you ask for help, they “help” you asuming that you know a lot of linux, ex: you just have to run a $sudo apg- install, and then you go to here and there, and write this; they use a leguage that I think more users dont understand.

Also, I dont understand why they mantain thinks so hard, I think the porpouse of technology its to make things and live easier, not more difficult, and linux its not easy for most of final users.

I would like to learn, because I enjoy learning new things, but, If what linux community wants, its to offer an optional so, I think they should make it easier to use.

I hope if any linux developer read this, understands what I try to say, adn setp by step, they could do something about it.

I have tried linux many times in the past.I have noticed that it was hard to use but as time went on it got easier to use.My friends and I have noticed that it was very usful that linux is open source.It allowed us to find aplications that fit our needs rather easily.So overall I would say that linux is actually a help OS.

Linux is for sadacts who think that by using it, they’re rebelling against “da man”, there’s a reason it’s free, it’s shit, if it was any good, they’d be selling it in shops, and it’d be on systems as standard.

Nothing works with Linux, and even if it does, you have to pay 3x as much, so what exactly are you saying.

Linux is for sexually placated teenage geeks who need to seriously go out and realise that Windows pwns Linux.

Oh yeah, and Mac sucks too, stop thinking you’re being clever and unique by using something other than Windows, Windows pwns all, accept it, and move out of your parents basement.

If you answered no, tell us why non-programmers (ie. 99% of computer users) should spend years learning Linux. I’ve read so many “balanced” articles defending Linux, written by programmers, that I’m just sick of their bullshit.

It does not take “years” to learn how to use a GNU/Linux distribution. I started using Fedora Core 5 about a year ago and have gained lots of knowledge about system administration, how an OS works, and programming in general. I’ve been fine using Linux ever since with no previous knowledge before that first day I installed it on a spare machine. What starts to become a problem is when people don’t want to take the time a figure something out for themselves. Every major distribution of Linux has an extensive documentation library with several resources and how-to tutorials. All it takes a little patience and perseverance. Now, I understand that this would still normally apply to the “geeks” and that your average Joe wouldn’t even know where to begin. That’s perfectly understandable and, in that case, Windows or OSX might be the better choice. Yet, at the same time, there are several distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and Xandros that are trying to make the experience more user-friendly with easy-to-install RPM and DEB packages. No command line use is required. But is it really that hard to install from the command line? tar -xzvf packagename*; cd packagename*; ./configure; make; su; make install. That’s it for most packages. Sure, that can seem overwhelming at first, but not that much once you understand everything that’s happening.

From the usability stand-point, as I said, Windows or OSX could be the better choice. But, that does not prove that Linux is an inferior OS (actually kernel). Quite the opposite in fact. The flexibility, freedom, and stability that Linux provides is exactly why it can be viewed as superior. Take this example: You’re a system administrator for a large company and you need more web server space. Are you going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on proprietary server software, on top of the server farm? Probably not. The fact the Linux is there can open up a free and configurable option for a large IT department. Sure, you might have to spend some money to train your staff to use Linux and the Apache server, but it’s worth it in the grand scheme, as you’ll save thousands more than you would to train admins on a Windows or even OSX server, given that fact that if the admins are competent (as they should be) the information is already free on the web.

To reiterate, the user may be happier with a “user-friendly” system, but since distros like Ubuntu are around, that argument is going away. Although, to touch on one more topic: security. I’m not saying Linux is invincible, but the only “viruses” that have affected a Linux machine have been done in Computer Science labs and didn’t even work that well.

Nick: I wag my finger at you for not being able to resist answering. But i guess you’re no worse than me, cause I can’t resist replying, lol. Anyway, the only reason I posted in the first place is because I LOVE talking about OS’s. So, here is my classic internet argument response:

First, I am no average Joe when it comes to computers. I am a civil engineer by profession, and a computer nerd by hobby. I do write the occasional script for work automation and pure fun, but I am by no means a programmer, so unlike you, I am qualified to represent non-programmers.

I have played with Ubuntu on and off for over a year now. I have really enjoyed the challenge of configuring my desktop to do all kinds of nifty things that Windows or Mac can’t do…like all those ridiculous Beryl and Compiz effects and eye candy. I spent many hours trying to fix random things that inevitably broke as a result of my tweaking. Problem is, I never found anything really useful that I can’t do on Vista or OS X. Sure there were a few minor quirks here and there, but nothing that came close to being a deal breaker. I installed hundreds of the enticingly free programs that seemed so useful in their description. Trust me, I tried to go exclusively Linux for a while, but when I actually needed to do some serious work or play, Vista and OS X were still the best tools, hands down. In short, there is not much “user-friendliness” with Ubuntu. I ALWAYS end up on forums and tapping away in the command line.

You said:
“From the usability stand-point, as I said, Windows or OSX could be the better choice. But, that does not prove that Linux is an inferior OS (actually kernel). Quite the opposite in fact. The flexibility, freedom, and stability that Linux provides is exactly why it can be viewed as superior.”

Why continue after the usability part? Isn’t that what everybody wants. Usability? To me, that precisely DOES prove that it is inferior. I could say that a random pile of hardware with no mouse or keyboard is wonderfully flexible and free so that you can build a custom interface to suit your needs. That doesn’t make it superior to a pile of hardware with a mouse and keyboard attached to it. IF you’re interested in building user interfaces, then hey, it might be really great for you, but as long as there is no brilliant new interface that can replace the mouse and keyboard, it’s a useless pile of garbage to me, the user.
Same goes for Linux.

Quick example from my experience:
I like to record music and really badly wanted to use free Linux software to do this. After many hours of frustration and learning about how audio signal routing works on Linux, I realized that I would probably need several weeks of my spare time to learn what I needed to troubleshoot my ALSA/ESP issues. I even installed Ubuntu Studio (a whole different KERNEL), thinking it would have me jamming with my guitar in no time. I gave up, and now I’m again happily using Garageband on my iBook which allows me to focus on creativity rather than writing an audio server for my soundcard.

Conclusion:
The software doesn’t work the way I want it to work out of the box. I am not a software developer. I do not consider fixing software in my spare time to be “using” the computer. Therefore Linux is inferior to Windows and OS X.

Actually Nick, if you are a sys admin for a “large company” as you put it, you would spend the $10k+ on proprietary web server software. Companies that large don’t fuck around with custom linux flavours, they just buy the shit that does what they want, no matter what the cost Because it saves them lots of dollars in the long run with ease of support. As a programmer you should know this, it’s much more cost effective to use something everyone knows then to write up some one-off custom app that nobody but the creator can support effectively. It’s the overall long term costing that really matters. Oh and 50 people is not a large company either, just so we are on the same page as to what constitutes a “large company”.

I currently use Kubuntu, Solaris 10, SuSe, FreeBSD, Knoppix (for a headless machine), Win XP Pro, and Win Vista. (feel free to e-mail me if you wish pics or a .mpg for proof) so I feel fairly well verses in these systems.

My thoughts are that many linux users are missing the key point here. The vast majority of people are not (and do not wish to be) computer savey. Call them sheep if you want, but remember that IT is a very small nitch in the world. Remember your days in highschool? How many of your classmates do you honestly believe would have taken the time to learn linux? The Jocks? The Cheerleaders? The average student? Well those students grew up and now are Accountants, Janitors, Stock Brokers, Coaches, Farmers, Auto Mechanics….etc.

The reason windows is popular is because not only are the schools teaching students on it, but also because it is easy to learn and doesn’t require you to drop into a command prompt. The average person just wishes to sit down and surf the net, play a game or two and use an IM.

Our views, because we are geeks/nerds, are distorted. You have to remember that your specialized knowledge is not something that most people have an interest in, nor do they want to learn. Just like you may not be interested in crop rotation or what chemicals are needed during certain times to produce the best crop growth for a certain plant. Farmers know this information but you may not think it’s worth spending your time on knowing. You just want to plant a seed, water it some times and get a few flowers or a few carrots. Does that mean you are an ignorant sheep?

The same applies for Auto Mechanics…or even Lawyers. The average Linux user doesn’t have the knowledge on how to manuever through the legal system, nor do they know how to bore and stroke their engines or replace pistons. That means the linux users must be sheeple right?

Everyone has a specific knowledge and skill set. Because you have a certain set in computers does not mean that everyone else is stupid…it means that they have a different set of skills in which you are ignorant in. If you want to turn people away from Linux and computer knowledge in general, keep on with the ‘holier than thou’ comments.

I’ll give a few examples for you: My parents are in their 60’s and through my help, have learned how to run their Windows XP laptops. Mother was a college administrative assistant for +20 years, and my father was a senior vice president for a very large agriculture company. Both learned how to use the Personal Computer very late in their lives, while I learned it when I was in my teens.

I started off by learning the OS the school had on their computers…Win 95 and DOS. Yes, I started off by picking up the DOS for Dummies when I was 13 and studying how DOS worked. My folks just wanted to know how to enter reports in Excel or run Word. I was the one setting up the 9600Baud modem for them…because they didn’t know how and didn’t really want to take the time to learn.

I tried to introduce my parents to linux by showing them some basics and leaving them a laptop. It sat unused after one day. Both said they didn’t really understand how to work it and felt comfortable with what they did know (windows xp). My father stated he had no desire to learn linux because Windows did what he needed.

Same with my friends (Who are also in their late 20’s’early 30’s). Out of the ten I lent my Kubuntu 7.1.1 laptop out to, only one expressed any interest…and he was a geek as well with a strong Cisco and Novell background. Linux may be a great OS (as I believe it is), but for the average person, it isn’t. If they don’t wish to learn C or C++ or the command line and just wish to use the mouse to access what they need, then it doesn’t matter how ‘powerful’ linux is…they will not use it.

I sat back down with my folks and went over what they saw as pros and cons to linux. (I didn’t have them go through an installation but I showed them what one looked like for Kubuntu 7.1.1)

The complaints my folks had were:

1) They couldn’t understand mounting, even after I explained it to them. They just wanted to boot the computer and have access to everything. Period. “I don’t want to waste time monkeying around with it. I want to start it up and have it work.” (my father said that)

2) No programming or Coding required…period. Neither of my parents (or a vast majority of people in the world) know how to code, nor would they want to learn. They don’t want to learn how to compile. They don’t want to learn C and why should they have to? Computer Programming is not their field of study. Just like most Linux User’s do not want to learn everything about Auto Repair or Building Engineering for their every day lives.

3) Their wireless card would not work with Linux..and that’s not linux’s fault. The hardware manufactures are moving the firmware from the device to the drivers and no releasing the code to the linux community. This means that the linux crowd can not program the card to work. Commonly known problem…but this is happening to video cards, and even a select few motherboards…but the problem is growing.

The praise my folks had for linux were:

1) The add/remove programs was very nice. They liked all the free software available to them

2) The price was great.

3) Multiple desktops took some getting used to but they liked that feature.

4) The computer’s fans didn’t run at full speed all the time (linux ran cooler) and they enjoyed the silence.

Long story short:

Not everyone in the world loves computers like we do. In fact most people do not care about them outside of what they need to accomplish with them.

The average joe does not want to know how to program. They don’t want to spend hours trying to get that new soundcard to work. They just want the computer to turn on and let them run the program they need. No further knowledge needed, and Microsoft (love them or hate them) knows this. They build an OS for the common man. An auto mechanic just wants to point and click… As a linux person, you just want to turn the key in the ignition of your car and drive to work…you don’t want to have to open the hood every other day to tune this or that. That is how the common person feels about their computer.

You laugh at them because you have specialize knowledge in computers and linux…but then again, you are just as ignorant when it comes to their field of expertise. Defend yourself in court without a lawyer and see what happens, or try and swap out an engine and do some tranny work on your car…with no training or knowledge in those fields. Do you think that the person flipping burgers or cleaning the floors at a business really is going to want to use Linux in it’s current state (even with the new ubuntu distros).

You have lost sight of the fact that Linux can not gain anymore than a tiny userbase unless it becomes as simple to use as windows. No programming, compiling or dropping to the command prompt needed….EVER. If you do that then you can give the Windows desktop market a run for it’s money. Until then, you can bad mouth the common user and windows all you want and it will not make linux any more popular.

I tried few linux distros before. All sucks. Really sucks. Just accept the facts that linux is sucks, and developed by suckers for suckers.

Those suckers think that if they use linux, they are special than others who use windows. They will be known as geek (piggy). However if they use windows just like others, they become ordinary. Pitty to those suckers.

They want to use windows, but they can’t. They will loose their so called geek title. So those suckers create linux to look like windows. Looser, linux is punk, and punk sucks.

It has been more than 10 years now, windows is improving and improvise every day. However linux still stuck at the butthole. Shame on linux. Those suckers will keep re-compile until death. Meanwhile windows users will enjoy life until death.

What cracks me up is how Linux extremists insult Windows users as ignorant. I’d hate to break it to these people, but not everyone wants to be an ultra cool computer geek. I know that’s hard to believe what with all the women that flock to Linux power users and everything. Some of us are just happy having a family and taking vacations every now and again rather than living the fast paced Linux kernel compile lifestyle.

My grandmother was on a ventilator/deliberator device based on Windows 2000. I had read about the security flaws in Windows and how Linux was much more secure and could run Windows apps better than Windows. Out of concern for my grandmother’s wellbeing I upgraded the device to Linux. It was working fine until Wine crashed and stopped the ventilator. Now my grandmother is dead. I’m suing Microsoft for not opening up their API to the Wine developers.

Every so often I deal with users of one OS or another telling me “USE THIS OS, [XYZ] SUCKS!”

I started with 98. *shrug* it was a crashfest. I moved to 2000 when it came out, and with the exception of one game, all my crashes have been traceable to hardware. Administrating isn’t difficult, and most good software, except windows itself, and office, are free – you can even get OpenOffice, making the only software you need to pay for Windows.

I’ve never had an issue with Viruses, DLL, or Spyware. Keeping a windows system safe isn’t hard, you just have to be smart and not click on every llink you see for ‘free pr0n’, ‘cheap v14gr4’, or whatever.

Still, I’ve made a point to get informed, and Windows didn’t do everything for me.

I tried MacOS X. All these Mac users telling me how much better it was, how much Windows sucked, etc. Many issues I hadn’t seen post Win2K upgrade really. I had a series of software crashes where Applications stopped working (the OS, to be fair, did not). Not a bad OS, not as easy to fix when it breaks, but it does break less. I couldn’t figure out how to alter the UI so as not to hurt my eyes. I tend to like a quiet UI that sits in the background – it doesn’t look fancy, ugly, shiny or ‘cool’, it just sit’s there, does it’s job and stays out of the way. For my aesthetics, that’s hard to get on a Mac. Windows 2000, with two or three color changes, fits the bill just fine.

Still, I certainly can see /why/ people use it. It’s just not for me.

Then there’s Linux. I tried it, it was hard to get a system working to the point where I could do 90% of what I wanted. I found myself always rebooting into windows. I’ve been trying various distros from 2000 until Nov 2007. Have yet to find one I like. I have had software related crashes more in Linux than Windows, I have not found the documentation terribly useful, and the Linux user base has often been mean and condescending when I’ve had questions (although, to be fair, the Gentoo’s, of all people, were quite rational and friendly). Still, I found myself constantly going back to Windows, because there always seemed to be some dependancy hell when trying to get a piece of software installed, and I spent more time administrating than using my computer.

Fast forward to 2005. A friend said I should try FreeBSD, after she heard my complaints. I did. I hadn’t before because a Linux user said “Oh, it’s just like Linux, but the people are more rude, the documentation is worse, and it’s got a higher learning curve.”

Wow. I shouldn’t have believed him. The documentation, at least for my brain processes, was better, it was easier to use, and while I do occasionally see dependancy errors, they are usually fairly easy to fix, maybe taking a lot of the computer’s time, but not taking much of mine.

I found myself using it as much as Windows. These days I find both FreeBSD and Windows are my OSes of choice. I still give other OSes a chance on occasion, try to see if previous problems were fixed, or if I can find my way around them, but for now. These two stay. When one doesn’t handle a task to my satisfaction (only a few in either case), the other one can. No OS does everything right. It all matters on

– What do you want to do with your computer?
– How do your mind and thought processes work?
– Your own personal sense of asthetics.

I’m assuming that in the past five years you’ve learned how to actually speak and write your English correctly. I’m also assuming you’ve become a huge shapeless mass from all of that sitting and figuring out each nuance of versions and distros you’ve tried moving to when the last one effed up.

To those saying Linux is for those who want to learn how to work with computers. I would like to tell you that you can learn low level programming / networking as well on windows as on linux. The only difference will be that it’s probably faster on windows due to the fact that it has more support and does’nt suck.

Here is why I think Linux sucks. Ok, there is really nothing wrong with the OS as long as you know what you are doing. Now i’m not stupid or anything, but I wasn’t experienced with Ubuntu. Now I asked for help and specifically mentioned my lack of knowledge with Linux and every single answer I received to the problems I was experiencing were in technical language. I then proceeded to explain that I was not getting what was told to me and to please dumb it down for someone who is dumb when it comes to Linux. and I still got technical jargon, and I was not able to receive any meaningful help for my problems, and that is driving me back, sadly, to windows.

I’ve tried Ubuntu and other Linux distros and relieved that they all suck. The user interface was okay but buggy. There’s allot of command line and no games! But there so Linux Software that I like. Like SuperTux (game) and Blender (3D Editor).

5 years later and I have the same experience… I really wanted to love Linux, but they’re going to have to do something drastic about application stability. I have a very nice 2009 Samsung laptop that Ubuntu apparently hates, and it crashes all my apps at the worst times just to let me know it.

*crawls up to the gnarled black gates of Microsoft to beg for forgiveness

First of all,
Linux is not an OS
Linux is a kernel.
So, this post should be something a bit more like “Microkernels vs. Monolithic kernels vs Hybrid kernels”

Second,
the Linux distros around there may not be extremely good for the “average joe”, but the reality is “it’s improving”. In fact Ubuntu is one of the easiest distro’s to use (with it just worked out of the box). And it’s getting easier and easier to use due to a more simple interface that does not require you to use the command line.

Third,
It’s absolutely pointless to say one OS is better. For example I might use Linux for server clusters, Mac OS X to read my e-mails, and Vista to play Crysis.

Fourth,
Linux has been known for stability and reliability, and that is one of it’s greatest features. Another one is that believe it or not, it does not degenerate as quickly as Windows XP/Vista do. You may like it or not, but I am a bit of a “speed freak” so I love it.

Fifth,
you are only comparing desktop systems. On mobile devices Linux is quite popular (Motorola uses it a lot).
And want to know why it is so popular? Simple: you can recompile the kernel (and most of the adjacent software) to quite a few architectures and their variants.

There is little doubt that Linux is a failure on the desktop. This is seen by how the consumers as a whole have completely rejected Linux and it now enjoys 0.83% market share. Let put things in perspective :

XP has around ~70% and Vista has ~18% market share – 3x as much as OSX. (PPC & Intel combined) The next closest competitor is Windows 2000 (1.9%) and then Linux at 0.83%. Windows 2000 is about 10 years old now and people have stopped buying it for quite a while. Just to underline what I’m trying to say, NT4 has 0.72% market share and the IPhone has 0.30%.

The common excuse from the FOSS camp for the dismal failure is.

1. Microsoft is forcing vendors to ship with Vista. The truth is this hasnt been true for about a decade or so. Due to the antitrust rulings MS is forbidden to have lock-in deals with OEMs or even ship **ANYTHING** of value with windows. You get tons free software installed by default with any popular Linux distro. Also keep in mind that linux has a higher market share in servers (~25-30%) where Microsoft also operates. One would think if MS wanted to stop linux from shipping, it could easily have. Now IIS is poised to overtake linux/apache soon in the webserver market. Dont believe me, do your own research.

2. No Major OEM support. This is false again. Dell, IBM, HP, Asus etc have for quite a while now offered Linux desktops / laptops. Lenovo has recently decided to stop offering desktop linux citing lack of interest.

Now, keep in mind that a TON of money (almost 1 billion) has been pumped into Linux by IBM, Novell, Redhat, etc. This is not a small amount.

Also keep in mind that a lot of linux users are strongly anti-microsoft and are famous in spreading FUD or half-truths and in some cases flat out lies about MS products. Compared to the number of microsoft users, only about 5% even visit forums.

Linux has enjoyed fairly positive press but MS in recent times has been criticized a heck of a lot. Whether that is valid or not is not important now.

When you know all these facts, the logical conclusion is that users have rejected the linux OS. The reason – Linux sucks. 🙂

I don’t understand why some people (who usually call themselves “real” developers/administrators) are so infatuated with Linux? Some attribute their infatuation to the fact that Linux creators put out its source code for everyone, as if it will let them know what makes Linux tick.
That is misconseption number one: Linux kernel contains upwards of 10 million lines of code, which renders your attempts at figuring out how it works fruitless. You can’t analyze even one hundredth part of the code. Moreover, Linux code has a tendency to grow in size, which creates a possibility for mistakes to crop up more and more, and soon, coupled with the fact that a lot of motley people are working on it, it will be rife with errors, as Windows 95 is
To those of you out there who still thiks that Windows “sucks” and teeming with faults, have you tried out Windows 2003 or 2008 or XP? Those OSs are very stable and secure and they can hold candle to Linux and I think they even better (much better)

This is how you install stuff on the most popular distributions of linux…

To upgrade?
sudo aptitude upgrade

or

sudo apt upgrade safe

YEAAAAAA HOW DIFFICULT…Personnaly I installed my graphic card and wifi card in minute with the windows drivers…Work perfectly…

And for the average people…There is a grapical user interface for installing programs..Im not talking about compiling here or anything…

In ubuntu,just click you .deb synaptic package and it will install..Just has easy then windows..And you know what?Something that makes linux much more secure is that many programs and kept in a repository wich are virus free…And if you have any issue,there is a huge community of expert to help you to get rid of your problems…

Well this may not be for all linux distribution,but it is for ubuntu.And you can order a cd by mail for free,they pay the mail charges.

The easiest way to put it is….all experts in their area are using linux because of better control of system etities..Windows are (intesionlly are) wide and dumb.. Dont get me wrong i am using windows as normal OS for everyday… but hey it takes only 21 days to learn how to properly operate linux (even debian), human ignorace as well as the pride are most common problem of this so called society, but that’s just copmuters area that should in way help us to get things easeir done…

i wrote this after half bottle of rum so take no charge at it as is..linux is better concept YOU cannot argue with that (opensource)…best way to settle this is for windows to be open source aswell and everything would be jelly…but no money as the most stupid invention of all kind is dirigating this world…humans are stupid and lat’s face it everything in this worl first beginning with society is based on the fact that a man is stupid…

And to get to to beginning of this post; niels bohr sad that the expert is a man that have done all mistakes in a very narrow field…don’t just read it understand it

It seems to me a fairly pointless exercise to slam either Linux or Windows as both have problems and faults and do not represent perfect software by a long shot. This is turning into a slanging match akin to Holden vs Ford and it wastes intellect and potential trying to out slang one another. It is exactly this achilles heel that is causing the self destruction of IT operating systems. No matter what you think of Windows it is serving up a need for over 80% of the world’s population who are putting up with its imperfections in the hope that Microsoft might one day listen , learn and get it right. Linux devotees are going through the same issues , e.g I installed Ubuntu last week and could not get it to recognize my vanilla video card so I was unable to drive the screen beyond 640x480x16 colors so how you Linux devotees think that is a great I simply do not understand. Software has to get easier , it has to get simpler , if you want complexity go play chess on the international scene if that gets you going but for most of us we don’t want to waste time understanding a PC we just want to use it , and to achieve that we do not need to be re-learning old tricks or playing the update game. As another example I re-installed Windows ME on an old P3 and got it to deliver me every feature I can currently need on XP/Vista albeit I don’t like ME it did work and worked a whole lot faster than either XP/Vista or Ubuntu so a lot of the commentary here is puffing in the wind.

Those geeks who tried Linux and said that it sucks are just, well, geeks. They keep dabbling with Compiz (duh) and wanted to play a heck of a lot of 3d games FOR Windows IN Linux.
I don’t understand why people hate the un-usability of Linux while they say Mac OSX is user-friendly. That’s just the familiarity factor if you’ve been using MS Windows since time immemorial…

And exactly what Linux distribution are you talking about? How can the Linux kernel suck?

Again: you hate what you don’t know; you pretend to know what you hate.

“Linux sucks!” – that sentence exposes a lot of your ignorance and that’s inexcusable. Go back to your pricey Mac that you keep trying to value or your pirated Windows XP/Vista OS.

You have to remember that the whole thing for Linux geeks IS that it is hard to install and use, takes hours to learn to accomplish the most mundane tasks, requires one to spend far more time tweaking their system than actually using it for anything useful, etc.. It’s just a nerd elitist mentality experiment taken to its extreme. Linux will never, NEVER make it, because Linux dorks do not remotely get it. And you know what? They don’t want to…that goes against their whole grain, which is all about, again, nerd elitism.

Tried it many years ago, fiddled with it again recently, was shocked (although shouldn’t have been) and disgusted to see how little actual progress was made. Sad state of affairs. I hate Microsoft and Macs alike but unfortunately Linux isn’t and never will be the answer.

What distro did you use recently?
I’m not one of those pain the ass Linux fan boys, and I do think user friendliness is still lacking, but Linux has definitely come a LONG way in a few years.
I haven’t needed to compile anything or install something in the terminal for ages, most things now are all in binary form (.deb & .rpm)
KDE 4.2 has been released, which looks great, what a modern OS should be like, although some people have had a few problems with bugs, mine has been fine.
Install was pathetically easy, a lot more so than Windows.
I think Linux will be the answer, guess time will tell.

To improve linux somebody must change it, common it’s based on unix. Linux people “THINK USABILITY”. Stop being elitist, I don’t care if you have an IQ way superior to rest of the world’s population. Stop being self-centered and “THINK ABOUT USERS”

My newest stable Kubuntu distro keeps crashing right after update, lost wifi. Woud wipe it out but do not know how to remove grub. And hey, why they can not make decent touchpad support in linux? It’s close to impossible to manipualte. sucks many times.

My experience, for over two decades, has been with DOS, MacOS, Win32, Unix (Solaris) and Linux (RH and Fedora 4), and Mac OS X. I’ve done programming, graphics, and many other things using computers. Like a lot of geeks, I’ve complained about Windows for a long time, as I was interested in learning more about how things were working, and it’s kinda fashionable to complain about Windows. But the fact is, Windows usually works fairly well for nearly anything you want to get done in the real world, and when it does hang, it’s easy to figure out why. Mac OS X takes things to the next level, and is just a wonder to use and get things done, a highly polished diamond of simplicity and “just works”-ness. Furthermore, getting to know how things work has accomplished its goal. I know.

So yes, Linux absolutely sucks. It can be fun while its sucking, that’s for sure, but unless you’re running a server, one whose hardware is not going to change very often, you’re far better off avoiding the uncountable lost hours you’re going to give over learning “how computers work” by debugging someone else’s lousy code, tracking down every little error Linux makes, from dependencies to poorly documented goofs, to stuff that just don’t f-ing work. If you really enjoy Googling for hours to find out why something doesn’t work, especially on those not-so-rare occasions when you still can’t get it fixed even after all the attempts, then Linux is for you. It will be great fun for a while, as you learn the hard way and play with it, and make no mistake, some things will simply, inexplicably, moronically, just not work.

Eventually, though, you will need stop thinking about how to debug the computer so you can do something WITH the computer, rather than doing stuff TO it.

Most of us are neither dumb nor lazy – that’s a copout from many Linux geeks. I’m a geek (sometimes a Linux geek), but I’m friggin sick of debugging Linux all the time! The only time Linux is trustworthy is when you don’t change anything, so if you’re lucky enough to have a Linux box which runs, by all means don’t change it, don’t get a new motherboard, or try to update the OS or the various “packages”. Leave it frozen in whatever year you were lucky enough to get it running, as a reminder of what your mind was like then. Only then can you enjoy the subculture which is Linux. Otherwise, you’ll always be Googling, searching and digging, hoping to figure out why something won’t work, even when someone else has it working just fine. The answer could be a click away, as you use your Windows machine to search for the answer, or you could waste another evening on Linux.

Using Mac OS X, with the incredibly powerful but equally simple way it has, reminds me day after day that it’s not about the computer, but the work I have to get done, and my work is not about debugging and fixing computers all day and night. I simply need my computers to do the task, whether holding data as I write a paper, draw to the screen as I design a complex graphic, or transfer bytes as I backup files from one drive to another. What’s wrong with a geek using a computer to do something other than fix the computer?

Linux (Ubuntu in particular) IS indeed a lot like Mac OS X. However, new users are frequently dumped into the Mordor of the terminal because people just recommend the blazing-fast apt-get command rather than the extensive, resource-hogging Ubuntu Software Centre. The only reason Mac OS X is more well known for that is because the terminal and its commands are heavily deprecated, and Apple’s computers are built specifically for Mac, so it works out of the box. Buy a system76 or Dell XPS with Ubuntu preloaded and see the best G/L has to offer. Don’t believe me? Just reply and I’ll give you 20 reasons why Mac sucks and 20 reasons why Windows sucks.

Windows isn’t as bad as you make it out to be… People like you present the idea that Windows will be infected just by having the PC connected to the Internet…

Reality is, Windows has no real issue if the user doesn’t do stupid stuff… Crud, Linux has the same problems in reality because you’re opening the users files up to being deleted or stolen just by giving them full control over them and that’s the part that this Open Source Community Seems to Forget…

I’ve watched your video and guess what? I’m one of those people that wants Photoshop before I’ll switch and what’s sad is that the only piece of hardware that wouldn’t work, with the lastest installs of Linux I’ve tried, was my HDTV Tuner and ultimately, it sent me to the Windows 7 RC to learn that as opposed to giving Linux a real go (with Photoshop under Wine because GIMP just sucks).

* Have you even tried it to begin it with . I hear people say they need hours of reading to even know how to install linux . Let me ask have you ever felt installing Windows difficult if not you wouldn’t feel installing linux difficult too . And there are 100s of places where you can get support for linux . So shut it will ya .
@ Simple Guy , even though this is a late post what difficulty did you have that made you say so . Which distro do you use . And as far as I can tell and what I heard from those who have ACTUALLY USED LINUX it provides stability as well ease of use compared to some other well known operating system .
@ssh , have you ever thought of filing and bug in the respective bugzilla . And if yes what was the response .
@pete , well in todays society Internet is an important factor and you can’t deny it . And there are viruses (produced accidentally maybe as the windows geeks say) even in one of the most trusted sites . Ok now you have to bring another Anti virus pack where you spend a lot of dollars and buying a key for it once in a while is much bigger work than of getting rid of virus . But where as in linux even if a virus is detected it would be taken care of ( i do mean it ) as it is open source.

Guys what makes linux tough is that you make it sound tough . Most of them who discouraged linux here may not have even used it once in a while . And installing is quite easy as installing windows .
WAKE UP thats what I’d like to say from the old prison of windows .

I really wanted to like Linux. I happily use Windows on a daily basis and love the fact that even though sometimes things don’t work, the solution can be found within the first two Google results if you know how to search. My experience with Linux, however, has never been that easy to solve. My first attempt 5 years ago ended fast simply because the installation did not work. Although I am on the geekier side and do like troubleshooting, I had other things to troubleshoot with higher priority so I quit. I went back in a few months and was happy to see that I was able to install! A new thing to play with, after all!

Excitement did not last long since the wireless card did not work. Now that’s a serious issue… Not because the card doesn’t work, but because releasing a software to production and marketing it as “Most user friendly Linux distribution” is simply not OK if you cannot automatically recognize a wireless card in a 2 year old brand name laptop. Troubleshooting gets really annoying if I have to troubleshoot a very simple thing.

This break was longer. I didn’t touch any Linux distro for about 3 years (except at work a few times where I had to test stuff)… I decided to give a try to Fedora when XP started acting funky on my Laptop (not my main machine for work). I decided to do Fedora instead of reloading XP and be forced to use it at least for night time browsing. I did, and I even liked it. I still had to troubleshoot stuff but wasn’t too bad. This was until yesterday which is when open office stopped working. The icon would just jump for a while when I try to launch it and then disappear being tired of jumping. I Googled a little bit with not much luck so I decided to uninstall it and give Go-oo a try instead. I got a message – “Unable to remove, a dependency is missing”.

What? I am trying to friggin uninstall an application. Who cares if the dependency is missing? That stupid dependency is probably why my icon keeps jumping and not launch and I am stuck with it even when I try uninstalling. I am sure there is a logical explanation why it cannot be uninstalled without that dependency, but come on!

I think I am quitting again and this time it may be for longer, as I write these lines from my fresh Windows 7 installation. Sorry to say as I am really for Open Source and the community, but Windows 7 answers my daily needs much better than Linux does. And don’t bring the “free” thing please, I earn my bread out of this device and don’t mind paying a couple hundered bucks every 3-4 years or so for upgrading.

My problems with linux have nothing to do with the operating system itself.
It has to do with a community full of jackasses that would rather spend 20 minutes telling you how stupid you are than spend 2 minutes telling you how to solve your problem.
That combined with the fact that after months of trying and patiently trying to gleam a tiny bit of help out of said community I can not get linux to maintain a properly wireless connection.

As much as I hate MS myself, I will be forced to stick with them until they can push a linux distro that doesn’t require 6 months of reading and learning just to install a update or driver properly.

In all fairness (though this may be biased towards myself and the people you unfairly refer to as “dix”), the community has better things to do with their time than to write a 20 page discourse when you could instead RTFM. When offering support, I try to give easy, guided advice which does not cover boring topics. However, if someone shuts down their computer in the middle of an Ubuntu update and then asks me why their system isn’t working, all I can do is facepalm.

Honestly, I love Linux software and all… I love gnome, really… way better than the Windows experience.

However, the hardware fails miserably under Linux. I’m on an ancient ICH-4 laptop, using a Pentium M CPU (Dothan 1.7).

I *need* undervolt. On Windows, it’s a 5 min task with RmClock. On Linux, it’s ridiculous… rebuild kernel, patch, download driver, load module, configuration (text-only, argh)… then you do some magic voodoo on the command line praying for it to work.

I’m an Ubuntu 9.10 user myself. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already said, so I’ll try to keep this short and sweet.

I love the Ubuntu philosophy : FREE OS & FREE SOFTWARE.
As David (above me) just mentioned, “the lack of hardware support is killing…” and it really is.

I have certain app’s & hardware too, that require Windows. So I pretty much have to switch back to Windows. I disagree that Linux is too hard to learn though. I’m of the opinion that it’s no harder to learn than Windows. I just think that most people are lazy and once they learn one way of doing something, they would prefer to stick to that one way of doing things (which is fine).

If I had the support for my hardware (I.E: TomTom GPS [I even started an online petition trying to convince TomTom to support their hardware for us Linux users @ http://www.petitiononline.com/tomlinux/petition.html%5D, BlackBerry phones, my Omni Blood Pressure machine, etc.)
I would stick with Ubuntu. But the truth is, the support is simply not out there.

Now my sons both share an older PC (Pentium) and since they don’t have any special hardware or software (they just use it to surf the net), Ubuntu works great for them. In fact, they prefer it over Windows.

I believe Linux is just as easy to use as Windows, but until there’s more hardware support for Linux, they’ll continue to lose the market share to Windows.

Someone who is a computer virgin, (meaning that they’ve never touched a computer.) takes to the Default Ubuntu UI way quicker than Windows. People say that Linux is less user friendly but I disagree. You can not convince me that my parents, my sister, my nieces, or my grandparents are computer geeks, but they use Linux daily. I believe in having the best tools for the job and therefore I have their computers dual booted with Windows XP or 7, depending on their preferences. And yet, Ubuntu is still their main OS.

I bought my laptop from Lenovo, and will probably buy every laptop from Lenovo. And one thing that I like about them is that they support every OS on their hardware from DOS to Windows 7 To OpenSuSE to Ubuntu. So I have absolutely no problems when it comes to drivers on my laptop. I also have installed Linux and many other machines which aren’t manufactured by Lenovo, and I don’t seem to have any problems with it. Let’s not overlook that Windows 7 has some serious issues with USB.

Well, it is not 2010 and Linux sucks more than ever, aided by the ever changing rules of shell scripting. Not to mention that it is hard to get real work hardware to work with linux.

Linux is probably the most secure OS, though, but that is more due to the fact that nobody wants to use it.

The main point of a computer operating system is to operate the system so the user can get real work done. With linux one spends too much time attempting to appease the fickle linux rule makers and productivity drops.

People spend all day searching the web to figure out the latest changes to shell scripting or why the new tape drive doesn’t work or talking to tech support.

The geeks have failed, it is time to let business people take over. The one reason OS-X is successful and easy to use is because there is a profit motive. It isn’t just a hobby to do between tokes and watching Scooby Do reruns.

Generally, Linux still sucks. Secure yes. Less resource intense, yeah when there is no UI. But the major failing point to me is that under the hood the various distros are too different. I am sick of spending my life searching the net to try and figure out how to do the same thing over and over again on the various distros, and then typing out miles of commands at a command line.

Documentation isn’t there. RHEL? might as well pay the money and use Windows, at least there is only ONE Windows!

Linux is a great novelty for light weight use, as long as you can live inside Gnome or KDE, but that is the same this MS did with Win 3.11 over DOS.

Wish I could kick all this crap to the curb and go back to my beloved FreeBSD. At least there is only ONE of those also!

Yeah I am pissed, I just wasted 6 hours trying to get something to work on RHEL with no luck, but yet installed on Ubuntu in 10 seconds.

So true, Linux does still suck, its not ready for the desktop when you can’t do even the simplest thing without it throwing some spanner in the works. Three hours just to get something installed under linux, five minutes in Windows XP. That has to tell you something about Linux, which I was using for a year btw, and it really frustated the heck out of me. Give it a few more years and we’ll see if its progressed some.

Yeah that’s a good idea. Make things harder for people. You know what, just change all of the code to some esoteric bullshit and have the user challenged while he goes through the daily routine of opening a web browser.

Linux users actually suck more than Linux itself. Linux is just a crappy operating system. Use it or don’t. Linux users are like viruses spreading disease. They trick hapless people into installing Linux over Windows. These poor victims just can’t get anything done once they fall prey to the Linux virus. Luckily, there is a cure. Install Windows. Or DOS for that matter. There is better software for DOS than Linux.

K for the last 2 weeks been trying to install elive mandriva and some other linux os not going to name them all and it seems they do not like or suport ati cant get them to even see that i have a video card so i went to the web for help and what did i read get rid of the ati card and get a nvidia card Hmmmm seems to me that if linux was so good it would work with my 2 crossfire cards but hell it cant even find them 2 if ati drivers sux or dont half ass work with all the linux guys in the world writeing 3rd partie drivers for linux then why cant one of them come up with a ati driver that works like the ati driver on my windows 7 not a linux hater love linux back about 10 or 12 years ago when u just picked a linux driver and it worked o and btw i know i can get the os installed using a bounch of comand line to get the cards up and running but who has time to do that i just want to dual boots linux with window not reprogram the os to do so

Windows? Insecure? LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Mac OS X is far less secure, for example: in Pwn2Own 2009 it was fully taken over in 10 SECONDS!!! LOL. True, Linux is more secure. I’m just glad I’m not a tech illiterate moron using a $3000 Mac that has worse specs than a $900 PC running Windows. Mac and Linux both have worse gaming capabilities, less software, worse Flash 10 video performance and worse support (by this I mean there are far more Windows users than Mac and Linux users so chances are if there’s something you need help with there will be a guide some where). Also, I’m going to squeeze this in at the end, Macs are less customizable.

I work at a data center and deploy dedicated servers, doing bare metal installs of windows 2008 is painful with OEM cd…Not to mention I’ve had one hacked not being behind a firewall within 30 min with no updates. Most people believe the ease factor from their bigbox computer all packaged for them. Try the real world. The junk doesnt even come with intel pro 1000 or working realtek drivers! This is 2008 SERVER mind you. Granted I clone installs now via sysprep the point is still valid.

Oh and installing programs? Ever heard of a “PACKAGE MANAGER?”
Also the linux-games-graphics-card debate is played out, obviously the market share is low so companies will not make games for Linux, That does that mean Linux sucks. hello retards… companies close up their hardware just as much as software companies do. Ati does not release specs for people to create drivers, it’s only because Nvidia is gracious enough to write a proper CLOSED SOURCE driver. Ugh freggin chore boy rockheads.

Your A drive is all set to go thru your BIOS , yet Linux disables it making it unusable forever. The linux techo-geeks claim to have a workarounds …But they don’t ….and there are no plans to fix this problem.
Speaking of the techo-geeks , if you can’t understand their arcane command line garbage ,,,, they really talk down to you…

Hmm, not always true: most will teach you the commands. Also, you realise that Windows has a very similar command line? And that underneath the pretty transparency, it does very similar things? Speaking of which, I bet you know at least some Windows lines, but hardly any linux commands, which is why you are complaining. I mean, if you know how to work with the BIOS through a floppy drive, you must know how to work a command line, at least to some extent.

The fact that this obviously old article is still getting hits is just a testament to how many people try Linux and end up hating it (for some good reasons, too).

A lot of it also happens to be the fact that (in my experience, as well as a lot of other’s, apparently), career Linux users tend to be full of themselves, and treat anyone who doesn’t know something like a complete idiot.

I recently got pushed to use Linux (don’t ask, work related, but totally unnecessary). And not just any Linux, Arch Linux. For someone like me, who not only has a distaste for Linux from past experiences, but is being asked to use a fairly advanced Linux, this did not sit well with me.

While I will say that installing it was fairly easy, due to a surprisingly-friendly wiki page for Arch, getting my wireless to work is a constant knife in my face. It quite literally breaks EVERY SINGLE TIME I run an upgrade, and getting it to work again is a half-day slog that I’m just tired of putting up with.

Might i also say that I’m running windows 7 in a virtual machine, because the people I work with ALL use windows machines, so often (all) times helping them requires the use of my VM, not because it CAN’T be done in Linux, but because doing it in Linux takes 10 times longer to accomplish the same result.

And I’ve heard some of the absolute worst arguments for Linux against windows ever. “You’ll hurt yourself doing all the clicking and dragging” Give me a friggin’ break, do you have any idea whatsoever how much time I save by being able to actually SEE my file directory without having to type “ls” into a stupid CLI everytime I change a folder to see my files?

Or how nice it is to just double-click an installer program and KNOW where it goes instead of Linux putting it in some directory that I need root access to get to? “program Files” is a hell of a lot easier than looking for stuff in “/bin” or “lib” or wherever the hell it decided to throw it at.

And I do realize there is a package manager gui, but the programs are almost never named what you think they are. And a lot of programs need the graphical frontend installed separately, another one of those Linux tidbits they like to keep to themselves.

I can honestly say than when the day comes that I’m not required to use Linux, I will go out of my way to ensure that I never have to see it, touch it, or use it ever again as long as I draw breath

Another with less than a full synapse at work in the skull. No wonder this country is in the dumps. Hopefully you won’t procreate and plop out some spawn that will somehow be even more idiotic than you.

Speaking as someone who has been a Linux user for 5 years now I can agree that using Linux did initially involve a fairly steep learning curve, and also involved a fair amount of tearing my hair out, But I persevered, and now wouldn’t go back to using Windows on an everyday basis – though I do have it installed as a dual boot option on one machine on my LAN.

Making a complete change from Windows to Linux is often an unwise decision as there are differences, and the learning curve can be quite steep, so a dual boot option is a wise choice, as it a Wubi install if using one of the Linux distros that allows this. That way you can return to the familiarity of Windows for some light relief. Linux probably isn’t for everyone, but personally I don’t miss the slow boot-ups due to the time and bloat of the various security bolt-ons required if you are to run even a moderately secure Windows machine, and the sheer bloat makes many operations less than lightening quick. Many of the problems associated with Linux eve two years ago are no longer the case, and whilst I accept that 9 or ten years ago Linux was a bit of a complicated beast to set up and get things like wireless cards working. This isn’t always the fault of Linux, as many hardware manufacturers overlooked Linux, or did not offer the source code freely so that the communiy could develop drivers etc. Even two years ago I had a few relatively minor problems setting up a Samsung laser printer, but I soon solved this problem with a little command line work, mostly very easy copy & paste stuff. Nowadays the CUPS system (opensource printer drivers developed by Apple) detects the printer and sets up the computer automatically.

I do every now and then boot into Windows, usually because a Windows using friend has had a technical problem and needs assitance, but it’s never long before I begin to wish that I hadn’t booted into Windows, not due to any deficiencies in Windows itself, it is what it is, but it just doesn’t have the speed or responsiveness of my Linux machine, nor does it have virtual workspaces like my Linux desktop.

I can understand that Linux isn’t for everyone, but personally it’s important that I use as many ethicla products as I can. Most Linux distributions are produced without the idea of profit in mind, or at the very least, are not commercially driven.

Many of the arguments presented by detractors of Linux are misleading. A common one is a comparison between PhotoShop and Gimp, with the claim that PS is so much ‘better’ than Gimp. Whislt it may be true that PS comes with a few more bells and whistles than a vanilla Gimp install, there are literally thousands of Gimp plugins available that have been produced by the community. Most close scrutiny of the complaints against Gimp by PS users seem to boil down to the fact that PS and Gimp have a different UI… duh… they’re different programs, and PS costs $700 against Gimp’s $0. (Though how many of the complainants paid that much is a subject for conjecture…) There is even a version called GimpShop which has a UI similar to that of PS for those who have become used to the PS interface.

I know that many people use pirated software on their machines, which is risky. Not only does this raise ethical and moral questions, (not that I give a damn about commercial companies losing out) as not only is stealing just plain wrong, there is also the fact that a lot of pirated softeare is full of all kinds of nasties… you do run anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-trojan and ant-worm security software don’t you? All this is avoided in Linux as you’d have to physically install a virus on your system rather than double-clicking an .exe file. It is possible to have a temporary infection of viruses in Linux, but so far none of them will survive a reboot.

This thread is now quite old, but it’s still interesting to read of the sometimes fairly major problems experienced only three or four years ago. Graphics cards are now pretty much universally supported, whether ATi or Nvidia, (though Nvidia is still better supported) and another one time gripe has also been despatched to the waste bin of history, and that’s support for games, since now Steam is porting all it’s stuff to Linux.

I thought Linux would’ve come along by now, but after installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and searching for all kinds of cool, neato freeware to try out, I’m unpleasantly surprised how painful Linux still is. Even Chromium and Firefox crash on a regular basis, Gimp decides to hide toolbars or even my entire image panel when it feels like pissing me off, and the rest of the software is a pile of wonky, piddly, convoluted Adobe knock-offs. I wanted to escape the iron realm of Microsoft and Adobe, but I find myself jonesing for that familiar landscape of stability and productivity.

Ryan, you may want to try a more current Ubuntu version than the LTS. GIMP 2.8, afaik, doesn’t install on anything earlier than 12.10 or 13.04. You can make it much more Photoshop-like by clicking on Windows > Single-Window mode, and from then on everything will be in one window by default – no toolbars, etc. floating about. Firefox crashes a lot in Windows too, mainly due to unstable extensions. Not sure about Chrome, but I use chromium-browser (which Chrome is based on) with no problem. Also – when you installed Ubuntu did you check off the box to install third party plugins as well? If not, type a search for “third party plugins” in Software Center, install them and maybe that will help.

Not sure other which Adobe products you’re trying to find replacements for (since I never used many other than Photoshop myself), but if you tell my I’ll try to help you best I can.

In the modern world of totally interactive touch screen tablets, it is like going back to the stone ages using a command line prompt. I mean seriously, mouse interfaces are on the way out and linux is still playing in the mud.

Dude, get over it. Windows is fast enough and secure enough. It gets stuff DONE and that’s what important to most of us. I’ve used the same Windows laptop for over 5 years – been through an OS upgrade to W7 – no issues, no fuss.

John, I can only conclude that you are the stereotype Linux geek snob or you’re a Windows user posing as a Linux geek snob. You could have just as easily offered some helpful advice to help solve the problem as spouting your insults. Thank goodness you’re not representative of the many kind, helpful people who’ve answered my questions on the Ubuntu and Mint forums.

Ten years ago I switched to linux for a day or two and it was a crappy OS. You could never get your TV as a second display and get it to work properly. And simple things in windows was super complicated to do in linux if you didn’t born with a keyboard in your. ass. Well 10 years latter its still same shit all over again. When I finally got my TV as a second display, different applications just pop up on TV or on a monitor when started as they please. Even though my monitor is set as a primary display. I tried to install RDP client and none of them after installation couldn’t be found anywhere on my PC. Some smart dude wrote on some forum, why don’t you run it through a terminal? Well how about you run your ass trough a terminal. Today time is money more than ever and I don’t have several days to spend to do some stupid things on my PC, which could be done in a matter of minutes on a windows machine. Using a linux is like driving a yugo, and its not meant for people who have something better to do in their life than sudo-apt get thiss and install that and ooooo can you please post output of that file on a forum so I can give you another stupid answer that no one understands than me (braniac born with my keybord in my ass). So i guess people who develop various linux distros still think that mouse is for pussies. Sure linux mint maya looks really nice for a first 10 minutes when you still didn’t try to configure all of the things you need. After that you realize that it just looks nice. You can polish a turd but its still a turd!!! And my crome browser opens on my monitor first and than when I pres home button it just jumps on my TV, what a f* is that? But what am I complaining abouth for zero $ you get a zero value 🙂

It takes a person with at least one active synapse. This explains your trouble with anything more than the Balmeropoly that does everything for you and you drool and slobber like an imbecile who’s performed a self-lobotomy while using it.

I am a Linux Geek and I understand that linux is not easy to use, I use Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS and it is no if not easy at times but I stick with it, but sometime linux has issuess and it is fustrating, hut not all of us Linux users act like cult members and I do not think you are an idiot if you can not get linux to work.

FU. When a customer tells you that your product is crappy and then explains exactly what they want and why, you bow, say “thank you for the information” and walk off humble. You don’t try to defend your POS. You rebuild the product to satisfy the customer. If you Linux d-heads ever had the stamina for the drudgery of producing a real consumer-grade product instead of riding on childish creativity, you could have had Microsoft by the short and curlies long, long ago.

Gotta call bullsheet on this one. If it were the best thing since sliced bread there would be more people using it. Be real. Geforce and Radion come immediately to mind, particularly when running multiple monitors.

I took a course on Linux and found the whole thing totally useless. My professor was teaching us about 20 different lines of code to create a program that we can use to remind us of important dates or things to do.

It was completely frustrating and I could get the same results and less headaches if I had used a simple Post-It note. My professor, who thought there was nothing better than Linux and UNIX, was upset with another student when he pointed out that we could do the same thing by using Google calendars and it was a lot easier.

I really, really wanted to like Linux. I wanted Linux to replace Windows on my machines. But after using it on and off for the last 3 years or so, the same old problems still plague it. Most of those problems are things that people have already commented on.

It’s a good server OS, but I wouldn’t use it for anything else.

Keep in mind that when I say Linux, I mean the GNU/Linux distributions. Android is rock solid and is a good example of Linux done right.

As long as I use laptops/desktops I’m going to have some version of Windows on it.

Windows Vista was a better experience than any Linux OS I used. Windows 8, as misguided as it has been, is still far more easier to use and reliable than any Linux OS I’ve used.

Exactly! I would never dream of anything but Linux on my servers, they are all running Debian and it’s amazing. The Linux desktop/workstation world still can’t touch Windows, unfortunately. Believe me, I want it to… but it just can’t. So, on my workstations? Windows 7 all around. Except my new laptop, it has Windows 8. Ugh, I’ll need to fix that soon.

I just tried Linux.. it’s overly complicated. I had hell with video card drivers.. never got my desk top to display properly.. installing things should be more simple than having to type in a lot of things.. if i wanted to do that, i would still use DOS.. .. someone really needs to make an OS from Linux that actually works good.

I hear Valve is working on an OS based around linux.. Steam OS.. i hope they can succeed with it where other distros seem to fail…okay fail might be the wrong word… i hope that they can make a truly simple version to us… i wanted to use linux so bad.. but for crying outloud.. getting the desktop resolution to run right seems impossible.. i could only imagine how much more frustrated i could become later down the line using it. No thanks.. for now i will keep being M$’ B*tch.

Well, I just wasted the best part of a half hour trying to fix my Fedora so that the pressing Backspace key takes me back to the previous folder/directory. Or to get the Delete key to delete the selected file in a folder. Fat chance. A myriad sites talk about ~/.config/nautilus etc., which is nowhere to be found and no additional explanations are provided.

So yeah, tell me again how Linux is superior to Windows! It sucks, sucks bad, and blows, too.

Files and folders starting with a dot like ~/.config/nautilus are hidden files by default. In nautilus you should be able to make them visible by pressing Ctrl+H. Also you weren’t really trying to fix Fedora but the Nautilus file manager’s hotkeys there.
Also should you ever find yourself occupied with too much clicking through folders you can simply put
nano ~/.config/nautilus
in the command line and edit from there. You see using the command line can in fact be simpler and faster than relying on a GUI. Depending on the task, of course.

Every single one of my servers runs Debian GNU/Linux, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m very experienced with Linux and for server tasks you just can’t beat it. Problem is, it still sucks for workstation use. Many simple tasks are convoluted and time-consuming. My workstations still run Windows all day long because it’s much more PRODUCTIVE, not because I’m an idiot slobbering at the teat of Steve Ballmer that’s never used a keyboard before.

Yes, idiots can screw up a Windows installation in 10 seconds flat, but it’s not because of the OS. Trust me, those same people would screw up a Linux installation just as quickly. If you actually know what you’re doing, you’ll never get a virus on Windows. I don’t even run an anti-virus program! I have MBAM and another AV installed, but they don’t run. I don’t like wasting my CPU cycles. Every couple months or so, I load them up and do a full scan just to be sure. Still no infections, after I don’t even know how many years now.

Side note: MSVC kicks GCC’s ass all over the place most of the time for code optimization. 😉

Windows 7, IMHO, is the most user-friendly OS ever. And I would very happily still be on the Redmond plantation if that model had been continued.

However, even with the new change in leadership at MS (okay, they hired from inside, but still a shakeup), it remains too unreliable over the longterm for my tastes. I’m tired of the whiplash I get as Windows goes back and forth from turkey > jewel > turkey ad nauseum, including their support windows (support for Win 7 ends in 2015! Just kidding! We’ll keep it up till 2020!). There’s too much at stake for it to hinge on what one company decides. With over 200 actively supported Linux distros, otoh, if the one I’m using goes squirrelly on me I can always switch to another that will give me the user experience I want.

I agree that many Linux distros are hard to learn. I think Debian provides unnecessary hurdles (e.g. having to edit a system file to provide tapping support to your touchpad) and Fedora is a pain to do anything on. Ubuntu and its spinoffs, however, in my experience offer no harder a learning curve than a first-time user of Windows will face. And even though most software can now be installed from a single GUI software center, the much derided command line can actually be easier for installation. E.g., instead of going from website to website or double clicking on a bunch of downloaded installation files one at a time (Windows) or searching for one program at a time in the Software Center, you can type “sudo apt-get install” followed by any number of programs, and they’ll all be downloaded and installed one at a time without any further action on your part. Handy when you have twenty or thirty programs to install. And when you get right down to it, there are only three commands that are used regularly:

“sudo apt-add-repository [repository address]” – to add a download source in the rare case a program isn’t on Canoncal’s servers
“sudo apt-get update” to complete the process of adding a new repository
“sudo apt-get install [program]” to install programs (this is the most common use for the terminal)

These really are no harder to learn than most Windows keyboard shortcuts.

I won’t say Ubuntu is easier than Windows 7 or its predecessors – that would be asinine. I will say it’s not much harder, and IMHO it’s easier than Windows 8. Most of the popular Linux distributions preserve the traditional desktop and the hardest learning curve involves infrequent tasks, while Win 8 turns the traditional desktop on its head and necessitates more mouse clicks and other actions than were previously necessary for common tasks, which doesn’t go away no matter how well you learn it.

Bottom line is, it’s your computer. You should run what you want to on it. If there’s software you need that won’t run in Wine and for which there’s no decent Linux alternative, such as GIMP instead of Photoshop or Audacity instead of Wavelab, you’re probably better off with Windows. But if you’re a typical, everyday computer user and don’t have confidence in future Win 8 and future versions, I’d say Ubuntu and its spinoffs (Mint especially, for XP lovers) is worth checking out. Try it on a dual boot system, spend just five or ten minutes with it a day and you might grow to like it. You might even end up switching for good. 🙂

I agree, Linux is horrible, for running super computers or what not yeeah its good, but you lose all the functionality of your computer, my touchpad doesn’t even work anymore, I cant get access to my hardware, i just feels so outdated, windows 8.1 is like ten years ahead of this OS. I feel like im back in 98 with this OS.

Linux is good as an emergency OS when Windows goes wrong. I too lost interest in the early years when finding Xandros was ugly, and “geeky” and clearly inferior to 98 or XP for games and more, then very recently used it when W7 failed to boot and when nonsensically the wifi wouldn’t work even when using an external clear modem which showed it was connected! Yet in Mint and Ubuntu that modem worked. VERY weird. They also, unlike W7 were resisting W7’s and XP’s sudden system freezes, blue screens and sudden power downs. Now to me, that makes Linux incredible. Also, I tried using the USB boot version of windows twice, years apart, and neither worked.

But here’s the obvious probs: Linux, unlike what one moron said, does not have a “vast” amount of software. For geeky stuff of course, but for every day use, that is a lie. Examples: there is only ONE website downloader, about three data recovery choices, and two are related, and except for VLC, I don’t see what everyone is raving about on the audio and video players. They are irritatingly hard. The best audio player I found, forget the name but it’s logo was a gray background and black circle with an A in the middle, when I used it to play a stream file, it kept doubling various parts of the stream, got so disgusted with it I went with VLC and it went away. VLC is not winamp, but, it’s superior for video. I tried XMMS, sucked, and Banshee (that thing sucks, why do people recommend that ugly thing?), and for torrents why do linux geeks recommend Transmission? Do they not know that utorrent is the standard for windows and that if Transmission were a windows app would in comparison be some obscure one star app in freeware land? What a crap piece of software, you can’t even see the download speed on that dumb ugly thing. For games: sucks, and what in the heck is with the icons for the games? I’m using ubuntu and downloaded some of the five star games and lots of the icons in unity for them look like puke, like kid crap, reminds me of the suck names for linux versions, like pansy homo, gay gapper, diaper baby, talcum powder ass flower, dainty fanny, tasty tickles, who comes up with these, a psychopathic suicidal self defeating tranny, a sadistic homo? *shivers* Names like those are what cause so called “homophobia” and repel people from using linux. And on the funny linux users don’t get laid thing, just the names alone for linux distros would repel a good looking girl. “Hi, come to my house… oh, yeah I don’t use windows I’m using Franny’s Little Fanny Ticklebottoms 12.01, wanna play a crappy game on it like Wesnoth where the bottom half of the screen is missing so that you can only play the first 10 minutes of it?” Girl: “Uh, my man was expecting me to turn my sprinklers off, gotta go, bye.” Pedo Bear 2000 would probably be more appealing, or maybe even Pedo Duck Extreme.

And, what else, see, linux has even slowed my brain down so I can’t even think. Oh, for formatting usb’s and sd cards to put some portable os on it, I can’t even do that thing which you’d think, after reading how linux is geeky and so amazing, would be able to do something so simple. I was using gparted to make partitions on a USB stick, took like an hour, only for me to realize I was splitting up a partition on my hard drive, then find out gparted can’t see my USB stick! So, then I went to use unetbootin to put an os on my stick, only to find out it didn’t have such a big selection, and that even when I managed to apparently get porteus on the stick, IT WOULD NOT BOOT, nor did porteus boot from a CD.

Oh and knoppix? It helped me revive a laptop that UBUNTU would not work on (if it’s not one thing it’s another!), so, expecting knoppix to have ddrescue on it so I can blah blah, I discover that this childish crap with all these annoying effects didn’t include it… what the hell, Knoppix, known for being a data recovery os, just happened not to have it in the latest live distro, oooooh, but it did have the special wecial effects eye candy! WOW THAT HELPED! Not! Just a massive waste of time!

AND DID I MENTION THAT WHEN IT GOES INTO SUSPENSION, IT FREEZES YOUR MOUSE? Why: KERNEL PROBLEM. Imagine you buy a car, and this brand of car has a “secret” problem the dealers don’t tell you about, despite having sold it and raved about it for decades: the steering wheel will freeze on you if put the car in idle, so that you have to turn the car off, and wait five minutes for it to start again.

I never wanted to like Linux. I have bud who let his son set up one of these freebie applications for his business. The kid is now 3 states away in college and we two grey-haired schleps are left trying to fix this mess. I’m not a complete loss when it comes to computers but unless you are one of these book-smart and real-world dumb geeks, stay away from Linus Torvalds bad joke on the world.

Linux sucks because the task of administrating software is far too difficult.
Consider the following scenario:
User wants to develop and deliver a system with a small enterprise application using, say, Geronimo and Jackrabbit.
First the user would have to choose a compatible java environment for Geronimo, along with the compatible JDK, JVM, etc.Chances are the disto the user likes does not have the correct version of everything (or everything). After sorting through the JVM’s, JDK’s,etc, the user can assemble the components needed.
Then the user would need Eclipse. FIrst he or she needs to decipher all of the cutsie names used by that project. Then the user learns that the eclipse version needed is not the one in his or her linux distribution. Then the user learns that (e.g. CentOS) the GUI for administrating software is useless. It goes on.
The bottom line is that using Linux on anything but a Windows-user-level requires becoming a distribution-installation-trivia expert to even get started. Sure, it all works once it’s in place, but I have to ask, Why is this so hard?
I shudder to think of the typical solution. Yet another Linux project.
Linux needs a generic environment management facility. And it needs it sooner rather than later.

Linux will not recognise my wifi. Tried everything. Done nothing different to what is demonstrated in forums and videos still won’t work. If you can’t install the basics it can’t be that good can it? Can’t even install from C.D either. no wonder linux is so secure , you can’t get online with it.

Linux is used by geeks who want to be different and the sad cases forced to use it because some geek only wrote some piece of software for Linux. No one else uses it if they can help it. Try installing Linux on a RAID system with multiple partitions to see just how embarrassing an OS it is. It’s the Tragedy of the Commons.